Research Methods in Social Relations Professor Mike Gallivan Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia, USA Class 6: June 23, 2009

Overview of Class 6 today  Review of old material:  Multiple regression analysis in SPSS  Using techniques for convergent / discriminant validity  New material for today:  Discuss Sivo, Saunders, Chang & Jiang (2006)  This article appeared in Journal of the AIS  a very good, but new journal started in 2001  this journal is only published online, not on paper  We will discuss the following topics in this article  problems of low response rate on survey  problems on unknown response rates  different ways to compare respondents and non-respondents  You have a chance to read and evaluate articles  Chapter 6 from textbook: The Logic of Sampling

Date Readings in 6 th ed. red book Readings in 7 th ed. green book Special comments June 22 7: (omit 7: pp ) 7: (omit 7: pp ) Finish data analysis team project. Focus on Likert scales (Semantic, differential and Guttman scales are used less) June 23 6: article about response rate on website You can omit: p. 360 (formulas) p (Adv. CFA and SEM) 8: article about response rates on website. You can omit: p. 360 (formulas) p (Adv. CFA and SEM) Paper from JAIS by Sivo, Saunders et al. (2006). Discuss issues related to response rate. Student will read and critique a study about its response rate June 24 19: : (repeat) 20: : Writing academic research papers (skip section about meta- analysis in 7 th ed.)

Review of yesterday’s class  Please take 1 minute to write one idea or lesson you learned yesterday that you will remember when the course is finished!

You have a chance to read and evaluate published articles  For each assigned article, please answer:  How was the survey conducted?  Mailed (paper-and-pencil), , posted on website  Who was the “target population” of survey?  How many respondents answered survey?  What analysis methods did authors use to:  Conduct convergent and discriminant validity?  Test their hypotheses or theory?  What was the response rate?  What efforts to contact or remind non-respondents?  Was the response rate better or worse than the average article that Sivo, Saunders mentioned?  Do you think the authors used a good methodology?  What should authors have done differently?

Here are the articles you can evaluate  Bhattacharjee, S., Tung, Y.A. and Pathak, B., “Author experiences with the IS journal review process”, Communications of the AIS, 13(37), 2004, p  Dalal, N., Singh, S. and Lanis, T. “Research concerns of IS faculty: an exploratory investigation”, Journal of Computer IS, 39(3), 2004, pp  Koh, C.E., “IS journal review process: A survey on IS research practices and journal review issues”, Infor- mation & Management, 40(8), 2003, pp  Gill, T.G., “What’s an MIS paper worth?: An exploratory analysis”, Database for Advances in Information Systems, 32(2), 2001, pp  Tanner, J., Totaro, M. and Hotard, D. “Research productivity and teaching effectiveness: MIS faculty”, Journal of Computer IS, 39(4), 1999, pp

Review Multiple Regression in SPSS  This is for interval/ratio dependent variable  you can only analyze 1 dep. variable at a time  Always select “options” then pairwise deletion  Indep. variables can be ordinal, interval, ratio  you can analyze many indep. variables at once  you can use a nominal variable if dichotomous  do not use nominal variable with > 2 categories  unless you first create special “dummy variables”  “dummy variables” can only have values: “0” or “1”  “House_1” dummy variable can be “0” or “1”  it can be “1” for all respondents in House #1  it must be “0” for all other people (House #2, 3, 4, 5)  Use the “Transform Compute” function to create

Review Multiple Regression in SPSS  More details about multiple regression  Entering predictor (independent variables)  you can enter all predictors at the same time  you can enter some predictors first, then others  this is called “blocks” of predictor variables  If you choose the “blocks” method, then …  select “statistics” and also “R-squared change”  this will show how R 2 increases for each block

2004 paper I published with the data

2005 paper I published with the data

Research method section (1a)

Research method section (1b)

Research method section (2a)

Research method section (2b)

Research method section (2c)

Review Multiple Regression in SPSS  More details about multiple regression  Entering predictor (independent variables)  you can enter all predictors at the same time  you can enter some predictors first, then others  this is called “blocks” of predictor variables  If you choose the “blocks” method, then …  select “statistics” and also “R-squared change”  this will show how R 2 increases for each block

Multiple Regression Results in SPSS

Problems with Response Rates  Sivo, Saunders, Chang & Jiang (2006)  authors are all at University of Central Florida  A good response rate is necessary for:  Internal validity – to support your hypotheses  External validity – to be able to generalize  Recommended response rates should be > 50%  Most academic research articles, it is too low!

Problems with Response Rates  Sivo, Saunders, Chang & Jiang (2006)  Problems with survey studies  measurement error  Due to imperfect questionnaires (bad construct validity)  sampling error:  Due to inadequate sample size or nonrandom samples  coverage error  Due to inability to contact some people in the population  We will focus most on the last problem  Also called non-response error  some people are systematically not represented in the sample, because they are more likely to not be among the survey respondents  Very busy people are less likely to respond to a survey  People without address will not respond to survey

More sources of Response Rates  Other sources of non-response error  People without address will not respond to survey  People without telephones will not respond to a phone survey  Research shows that men are less likely to answer than women  Prior review of survey studies showed problems:  Paper published by Pinsonneault and Kraemer (1993)  Identified the following problems in surveys:  Low response rates (I.e., < 50%)  Unsystematic (not random) or inadequate sampling  Single method designs