Chapter 12 Flashcards
Earliest use of surveys
Survey research may have its roots in English and American “social surveys” conducted around the turn of the 20th century by researchers and reformers who wanted to document the extent of social problems such as poverty (Converse, 1987)[1].
Cognitive Model of responding to a survey:
Respondents must interpret the question, retrieve relevant information from memory, form a tentative judgment, convert the tentative judgment into one of the response options provided (e.g., a rating on a 1-to-7 scale), and finally edit their response as necessary.
Context Effects:
Unintended influences on respondents’ answers because they are not related to the content of the item but to the context in which the item appears.
Item-Order effect
For example, there is an item-order effect when the order in which the items are presented affects people’s responses. One item can change how participants interpret a later item or change the information that they retrieve to respond to later items.
How to fight order effects:
To mitigate against order effects, rotate questions and response items when there is no natural order. Counterbalancing or randomizing the order of presentation of the questions in online surveys are good practices for survey questions and can reduce response order effects that show that among undecided voters, the first candidate listed in a ballot receives a 2.5% boost simply by virtue of being listed first[6]!
Open-Ended questionnaire items:
Open-ended items simply ask a question and allow participants to answer in whatever way they choose.
Open-ended items are relatively easy to write because there are no response options to worry about. However, they take more time and effort on the part of participants, and they are more difficult for the researcher to analyze because the answers must be transcribed, coded, and submitted to some form of qualitative analysis, such as content analysis. Another disadvantage is that respondents are more likely to skip open-ended items because they take longer to answer. It is best to use open-ended questions when the answer is unsure or for quantities which can easily be converted to categories later in the analysis.
Closed-ended questionnaire items
Closed-ended items ask a question and provide a set of response options for participants to choose from.
What is a rating scale?
A rating scale is an ordered set of responses that participants must choose from.
Likert Scale
In reading about psychological research, you are likely to encounter the term Likert scale. Although this term is sometimes used to refer to almost any rating scale (e.g., a 0-to-10 life satisfaction scale), it has a much more precise meaning.
In the 1930s, researcher Rensis Likert (pronounced LICK-ert) created a new approach for measuring people’s attitudes (Likert, 1932)[8]
BRUSO
An acronym that stands for “brief,” “relevant,” “unambiguous,” “specific,” and “objective,” which is used to create effective questionnaire items that are brief and to the point.
Double-barrelled questions
A common problem here is closed-ended items that are “double barrelled.” They ask about two conceptually separate issues but allow only one response. For example, “Please rate the extent to which you have been feeling anxious and depressed.” This item should probably be split into two separate items—one about anxiety and one about depression.
How many response options should you allow?
For rating scales, five or seven response options generally allow about as much precision as respondents are capable of. However, numerical scales with more options can sometimes be appropriate
Every survey should have a ____ or ___ introduction.
Written, Spoken.
What are the two purposes of a survey introduction?
- Encourage participants to participate in a survey.
- Establish informed consent.
What should come after a survey introduction?
-Instructions
-Most important questions
-Less important questions
-Least important questions