COMM 250 Agenda Week 6

1
COMM 250 Agenda - Week 6

• Housekeeping
• Today C1 (put in Folders)
• TP2 See your folders
• Monday RAT2
• Lecture
• Surveys Demographic, Scale items
• ITE3 Multiple Parts
• Making Teams Work II

2
Types of Research

• Experiments
• Survey Analysis
• Textual Analysis
• Naturalistic Inquiry

3
Surveys

• Survey is a General Research Methods
• Questionnaires (opinion polls, market research,
  evaluation research)
• Field research (often qualitative)
• Interviews, Focus Groups (often qualitative)
• Questionnaires
• Self-administered Hard-copy, E-mail
• Self-administered Web-based
• Interview in person
• Interview telephone

4
Types of Questions

• Demographic Questions
• Age, Gender, Race, Income, Education, etc.
• Behavioral (Infrequently, Frequently)
• Do you own or have your own cell phone?
• How often do you use a cell phone and drive?, or
• I use my cell phone while driving.
• Attitudinal (Disagree, Agree)
• Driving while using a cell phone should be
  banned.
• Driving while using a cell phone is dangerous.

5
In-Class Team Exercise 6 - Part I

• First Do as Individuals, then produce a Team
  Version
• Create 3 demographic questions for a survey
• Gender, Age, and Education
• Rules - You should
• Assume this is a self-administered
  questionnaire
• Choose the exact wording you would use
• Design Multiple Choice (not Fill in the
  Blank)
• Assign numbers to each value/level of each
  variable
• Deliverable a written version of the above
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6
Choosing Questions

• 2 Types of Questions
• Open-ended (Fill in the blanks)
• Closed (Multiple Choice Y/N, a,b,c,d,e, 7 pt.
  scales)
• Multiple Choice Questions
• Mutually Exclusive
• Exhaustive
• Scale Questions
• Even / Odd number of values (3 or 4? 5,7 or 6?)
• Total number of values (3-5-7-9 or 4-6-8-10?)
• Label each point on the scale, or use anchors ?

7
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

8
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)

9
In-Class Team Exercise 3 - Part II

• 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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10
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)