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

2. 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

3. 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: ______________ )

4. 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? ___ ___

5. 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
or 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)

6. 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.

7. 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

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. 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.)