COMM 250 Agenda Week 7

1
COMM 250 Agenda - Week 7

• Housekeeping
• Today RAT3
• Lecture
• Continuing Surveys
• Choices re Scale items, layout
• Examples
• Determinism Free Will Part I
• ITE 7

2
Multiple Choice Items

• The Options (possible values) in MC Items should
  be
• Mutually Exclusive
• Exhaustive
• Consistent
• Linear (follow in a logical order)
• Clear and concise
• Limited in number (so the researcher can make
  sense of them)

3
In-Class Team Exercise 7 - Part I

• First Do as Individuals, then produce a Team
  Version
• Example of a BAD Item
• Which of the following describes your CURRENT
  living situation?
• 1) Married, no kids 5) Divorced
• 2) Married, 1-3 kids at home 6) Divorced, 1-3
  kids at home
• 3) Married, 3 or more kids 7) Divorced, 3 kids
  at home
• at home 8) Unmarried, but have kids
• 4) Unmarried
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• What mistakes make this a bad item?
• How would you fix this problem?
• Deliverable a written answer to a b
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4
Solution

• Example of a BETTER Item
• Which best describes your CURRENT living
  situation?
• 1) Married, no kids 5) Divorced, 1-3 kids at
  home
• 2) Married, 1-3 kids at home 6) Divorced, more
  than 3 kids at home
• 3) Married, more than 3 kids 7) Unmarried, no
  kids
• at home 8) Unmarried, 1-3 kids at home
• 4) Divorced, no kids 9) Other (Please specify
  ______________ )

5
Solution

• Example of a Better APPROACH
• What is your marital status?
• 1) Single 3) Divorced
• 2) Married 4) Widowed
• How many children do you have? ___ ___
• How many CHILDREN currently live with you? ___
  ___
• How many other ADULTS currently live with you?
  ___ ___

6
Scale Items

• Even / Odd Number of Values
• Even - no midpoint - forces users to choose
• Odd - has a midpoint - allows a neutral
  response
• (I prefer Odd)
• Number of values
• 3-5-7-9 or 4-6-8-10 point scales
• 3-4 is simple but may not allow discrimination
• 9-10 is usually overkill
• 5-6-7 is usually best
• (I prefer 7)

7
Determinism Free Will

• Determinism
• Everything is determined in advance
• If science knew all the rules, it could specify
  all outcomes (predict all events)
• It seems to work with billiard balls does it
  work for human behavior?
• But does this imply that there is no free will?
• (Well return to this when we get to statistics.)

8
Surveys

• The rest of Lecture 7 will be in the form of
  examples of questionnaire items on Overhead
  Transparencies - these will that highlight the
  lessons discussed in the following slides from
  Week 6.

9
Open-ended vs. Closed Questions

• Open-ended Items (Fill in the Blanks)
• Useful for exploratory data collection
• ADV Respondents (Rs) arent led by some list
  of available choices / opinions
• DISADV Requires much more work - to quantify,
  researcher must categorize and code responses
• Closed-ended Items (Multiple Choice)
• Useful when all of the available responses are
  known
• ADV 1) Easier to quantify, and 2) Rs are
  reacting to the same stimulus materials (some
  list of choices)
• DISADV 1) Researcher may miss some important
  reasons/options

10
Multiple Choice Items

• The Options (possible values) in MC Items should
  be
• Mutually Exclusive
• Exhaustive
• Consistent
• Linear (follow in a logical order)
• Clear and concise
• Limited in number (so the researcher can make
  sense of them)

11
Scale Items

• Even / Odd Number of Values
• Even - no midpoint - forces users to choose
• Odd - has a midpoint - allows a neutral
  response
• (I prefer Odd)
• Number of values
• 3-5-7-9 or 4-6-8-10 point scales
• 3-4 is simple but may not allow discrimination
• 9-10 is usually overkill
• 5-6-7 is usually best
• (I prefer 7)

12
In-Class Team Exercise 7 - Part II

• TBA in class !
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