COMM 250 Agenda - Week 7 Housekeeping Today: RAT2 Return: C1 Lecture Continuing Surveys: Choices re: Scale items, layout Examples ITE 4

In-Class Team Exercise # 4 - 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What mistakes make this a bad item? How would you fix this problem? Deliverable: a written answer to a & b

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: ______________ )

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? ___ ___

Scale Items Even / Odd Number of Values 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)

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.

Open-ended vs. Closed Questions Open-ended Items (“Fill in the Blanks”) Useful for “exploratory” data collection ADV: Respondents (Rs) aren’t “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

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)

Determinism & Free Will 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? (We’ll return to this when we get to statistics.)