Survey Research Flashcards
6 goals of survey research
- gather as much info as we can about topic of interest
- describe characteristics of a population
- describe and compare the characteristics of different populations or groups within a population
- describe population time trends
- describe relationships among psychological variables
- test hypotheses, theories and models
survey research is different from an experiment:
gathering very focussed information about a couple dVs
4 things to developing a good survey
- convert research goals into a list of specific topics
- develop your items
- pretest the questionnaire
- revise the questionnaire
developing your items
your conceptual goals and how you are operationalizing them
- make sure the items are clear, and you have to assess the face and content validity
item format
the way in which you ask a question given that you’ve worded it a certain way
open ended items
free form answering, type whatever you think
pros of open ended items
- allows people to answer in any way they see fit
- maximizes their freedom of expression
cons of open ended items
have to code your answers
- have to figure out how to classify answers into mutually exclusive categories
closed ended items
provide your respondents with specific response options
pros of closed ended items
- already coded
- makes data entry easy
- don’t get crazy answers
cons of closed ended items
- might’ve missed some good answers
six types of closed ended questions
- multiple choice
- forced choice
- likert and likert type scales
- semantic differential scales
- visual analogue scales
- scenarios
multiple choice format
single response: pick the best option
multiple response: check all that apply
ranking scale: rank the best three
forced choice
have them look at two or more options and choose the best out of those two options
- choosing bigger priority
ex of forced choice
political polls
- narcissistic personality inventory
