Questionnaires

Question 1

What are we measuring?

Answer 1

Psychological constructs

Question 2

What are the problems with what we are trying to measure?

Answer 2

They are psychological constructs which don’t actually exist - so they aren’t directly measurable

Question 3

Examples of psychological constructs

Answer 3

empathy
nosiness
anxiousness
greediness
selflessness
mental imagery ability
attention
memory

Question 4

How do we measure the immeasurable?

Answer 4

Observe behaviour - put people in situations and see how they behave

Brain scans - see what area is activated when doing tasks, but no evidence that these exist, becomes circular

Brain lesions - lack a quality, see what corresponds to that issue but could be involved in other things

measure aspects of the quality - not perfect measurements, build a case for why you have chosen to measure something

Question 5

How do we know these qualities/abilities can be measured?

Answer 5

How do we know they exist as traits?
have psychological reality
have particular characteristics

Question 6

What is a construct?

Answer 6

The underlying concept that we can’t measure

Question 7

What are items?

Answer 7

The things that you put in a questionnaire - thoughts, attitudes, feelings or behaviours

Question 8

How do we arrive at the diagnosis?

Answer 8

By observing the combinations of different symptoms

Question 9

How can we define and measure a construct?

Answer 9

By finding out what characteristics/items produce similar ratings/response - patterns indicate the degree to which they have a construct

Question 10

How are factors measured?

Answer 10

By responses to questions / items

Question 11

What does polarity mean?

Answer 11

Direction to a particular question - higher and lower mean different things

Question 12

What makes a good questionnaire?

Answer 12

Discrimination
Validity
Reliability

Question 13

What is discrimination?

Answer 13

Answers on a questionnaire corresponds to how much people have the characteristic - do people with different scores on the questionnaires actually differ in the construct being measured

whether the q can successfully tell people apart:
people with same scores should be equal to each other in the measured construct
people with different scores should be different to each other in the measured construct
degree of difference = difference in scores

Question 14

What is validity?

Answer 14

Does the questionnaire measure what it intends too?

Question 15

What is reliability?

Answer 15

Does the questionnaire produce the same results when completed under the same conditions?
questionnaires should produce the same results under the same conditions - each persons scores should be the same at different points in time

Question 16

What are the types of validity?

Answer 16

Content
Criterion
Factorial

Question 17

What is content validity?

Answer 17

Items relate to the construct of interest
Are comprehensive (cover the entire construct)
Do not overlap - ask same thing

Question 18

How do you ensure for content validity?

Answer 18

Conduct thorough background research
Gather suggestions on items for a variety of sources
Ask experts in the field for feedback
Write good items

Question 19

What is criterion validity?

Answer 19

Items do in fact measure the construct of interest in a meaningful way

Question 20

How do you ensure for criterion validity?

Answer 20

Test predictions of the questionnaire
Correlate questionnaire with other established measures
Statistical testing

Question 21

What is factorial validity?

Answer 21

Responses on certain items will stick together or correlate with each other - these groups are called a factor - does the factor structure you hypothesised correspond to reality

Question 22

How do you test for factorial validity?

Answer 22

Factor analysis

Question 23

Steps of creating a questionnaire

Answer 23

Choose a construct to measure
Decide on a response scale
Generate items (questions) to measure this construct
Collect the data
Analyse the data to discover what factors the items group in, whether this structure is reliable and whether the questionnaire is valid
Assess and write up the results

Question 24

What is self-esteem?

Answer 24

One’s overall sense of worthiness as a person

Rosenberg scale

Question 25

What is self-efficacy?

Answer 25

An optimistic sense of personal competence - accounting for motivation and accomplishments in human beings

Question 26

What are the ways of quantifying responses?

Answer 26

Open and closed questions
open - choose answer, good as allows exploration of themes, doesn’t restrict answers but very difficult to quantify, can’t do statistical analysis
closed - fixed answer, content can only be certain choices. Make sure you have covered all of the options - need an other option

Question 27

What are thy types of numeric response scales?

Answer 27

Ranking scales - assign them a rank of importance of doing something (1=most important)

Rating scales - rate how much you like/dislike doing something (1=not at all)

Semantic differentiations, used for attitude/emotions - rank where you fall on a scale with a number, pleasant to unpleasant for an activity

Likert scales - 5/7 points, include a midpoint (strongly agree/disagree). Avoid categorical questions or likert scales with an obvious right answer - leads to skewed data. offer a statement - answer how much this relates to them

Question 28

What are rating scale effects?

Answer 28

The way you ask a question can dramatically effect the answer you get eg. how successful have you been in life:
0 - 10 - 34% gave values between 0-5
-5-5 - 13% gave values between -5-0 - people dont want to say they have been unsuccessful

Question 29

What should you ensure with a rating scale?

Answer 29

It is kept consistent across your questionnaire - the way it is structured, biases you towards a response

Question 30

What are the problems which can arise with wording effects?

Answer 30

Ambiguity - most serious threat to reliability, e.g. frequently may mean different things, better giving proper categories ‘less than once’
Leading questions - imply there is a right answer
Double negatives - are you against a ban
Double barrelled questions - cant respond to each thing individally
Acquiescence bias - tendency to agree or say yes, reverse the statement
Neutrally and clearly stating an idea is difficult to impossible