Social Psych Chap 7: Asking People About Themselves: Survey Research

There are three general types of survey questions...

-Attitudes and beliefs -Facts and demographics -Behaviors

Responses to Questions

-Closed- Versus Open-Ended Questions (Questions may be either closed- or open-ended. With closed-ended questions, a limited number of response alternatives are given; with open-ended questions, respondents are free to answer in any way they like. Thus, you could ask a person, "What is the most important thing children should learn to prepare them for life?" followed by a list of answers from which to choose (a closed-ended ques- tion), or you could leave this question open-ended for the person to provide the answer.) -Number of Response Alternatives

Types of nonprobabiliity sampling

-Haphazard sampling -Purposive sampling -Quota sampling

Finalizing The Questionnaire

-How to Format the Questionnaire -Refining Questions

types of probability sampling

-Simple random sampling (every mem- ber of the population has an equal probability of being selected for the sample) -stratified sampling -cluster sampling

Why conduct surveys?

-Useful methodology -Study relationships among variables and ways that behaviors change over time -Complement to experimental research findings

response set

-a tendency to respond to all questions in a particular perspective rather than to provide answers that are directly related to the questions. -can affect the usefulness of data obtained from self-reports

Reasons for using Convenience Samples

-the investigator can obtain research participants without spending a great deal of money or time on selecting the sample -*Concerns:* may not be generalized (low external validity). There may be biases since the samples are coming from the same place (151)

cluster sampling

Rather than randomly sampling from a list of individu- als, the researcher can identify "clusters" of individuals and then sample from these clusters. After the clusters are chosen, all individuals in each cluster are included in the sample. For example, you might conduct the survey of students using cluster sampling by identifying all classes being taught—the classes are the clusters of students. You could then randomly sample from this list of classes and have all members of the chosen classes complete your survey (making sure, of course, that no one completes the survey twice). Most often, use of cluster sampling requires a series of samples from larger to smaller clusters—a multistage approach. For example, a researcher inter- ested in studying county health care agencies might first randomly determine a number of states to sample and then randomly sample counties from each state chosen. The researcher would then go to the health care agencies in each of these counties and study the people who work in them. Note that the main advantage of cluster sampling is that the researcher does not have to sample from lists of individuals to obtain a truly random sample of individuals.

Other technologies

Researchers are taking advantage of new technolo- gies to assist with the collection of data. An interesting application is seen in studies aimed at sampling people's behaviors and emotions over an extended period of time. The usual approach would be to ask people to provide retrospec- tive accounts of their behaviors or emotions (e.g., how often have you felt angry during the last week?). With cell phones and other wireless communication de- vices, it is possible to contact people at various times and ask them to provide an immediate report of their current activities and emotions. Barrett and Barrett (2001) refer to this as "computerized experience-sampling."

Open versus closed response can sometimes lead to different conclusions...

Schwarz (1999) He cites the results of a survey question about preparing children for life. When "To think for themselves" was one alternative in a closed- ended list, 62% chose this option; however, only 5% gave this answer when the open-ended format was used. This finding points to the need to have a good understanding of the topic when asking closed-ended questions.

"Yea-saying" and "nay-saying"

"Yea-saying" and "nay-saying" When you ask several questions about a topic, a respondent may employ a response set to agree or disagree with all the questions. Such a tendency is referred to as "yea-saying" or "nay-saying." The problem here is that the respondent may in fact be expressing true agree- ment, but alternatively may simply be agreeing with anything you say. One way to detect this response set is to word the questions so that consistent agreement is unlikely. For example, a study of family communication patterns might ask people how much they agree with the following statements: "The members of my family spend a lot of time together" and "I spend most of my weekends with friends." Similarly, a measure of loneliness could phrase some questions so that agreement means the respondent is lonely ("I feel isolated from others") and oth- ers with the meaning reversed so that disagreement indicates loneliness (e.g., "I feel part of a group of friends"). Although it is possible that someone could legiti- mately agree with both items, consistently agreeing or disagreeing with a set of related questions phrased in both standard and reversed formats is an indicator that the individual is "yea-saying" or "nay-saying."

Haphazard sampling

"convenience" sampling. Haphazard sampling could be called a "take-them-where-you-find-them" method of obtaining participants. Thus, you would select a sample of students from your school in any way that is convenient. You might stand in front of the student union at 9 a.m., ask people who sit around you in your classes to participate, or visit a couple of fraternity and sorority houses. Unfortunately, such procedures are likely to introduce biases into the sample so that the sample may not be an accurate representation of the population of all students. Thus, if you selected your sample from students walking by the student union at 11 a.m., your sample excludes students who don't frequent this location, and it may also eliminate afternoon and evening students. On my own campus, this sample would differ from the population of all students by being younger, working fewer hours, and being more likely to belong to a fraternity or sorority. Sample biases such as these limit your ability to use your sample data to estimate the actual population values. Your results may not generalize to your intended population but instead may describe only the biased sample that you obtained.

QUAID

(Question Understanding Aid) Graesser and his colleagues have developed a computer program that analyzes question wording.

Rating Scales

-very common in many areas of research -ask people to provide "how much" judgments on any number of dimensions—amount of agreement, liking, or confidence, for example. can have many different formats. The format that is used depends on factors such as the topic being investigated. Perhaps the best way to gain an understanding of the variety of formats is simply to look at a few examples. The simplest and most direct scale presents people with five or seven response alternatives with the endpoints on the scale labeled to define the ex- tremes. For example, --Students at the university should be required to pass a comprehensive examination to graduate. Strongly agree_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Strongly disagree --How confident are you that the defendant is guilty of attempted murder? Not at all confident _ _ _ _ _Very confident

Question Wording

A great deal of care is necessary to write the very best questions for a survey. Cognitive psychologists have identified a number of potential problems with question wording (see Graesser, Kennedy, Wiemer-Hastings, & Ottati, 1999). Many of the problems stem from a difficulty with understanding the question, including (a) unfamiliar technical terms, (b) vague or imprecise terms, (c) un- grammatical sentence structure, (d) phrasing that overloads working memory, and (e) embedding the question with misleading information.

Loaded questions

A loaded question is written to lead people to respond in one way. For example, the questions "Do you favor eliminating the waste- ful excesses in the public school budget?" and "Do you favor reducing the pub- lic school budget?" will likely elicit different answers. Or consider that men are less likely to say they have "raped" someone than that they have "forced sex"; similarly, women are less likely to say they have been raped than forced to have unwanted sex (Koss, 1992). Questions that include emotionally charged words such as rape, waste, immoral, ungodly, or dangerous may influence the way that peo- ple respond and thus lead to biased conclusions.

Quota sampling

A researcher who uses this technique chooses a sample that reflects the numerical composition of various subgroups in the population. Thus, quota sampling is similar to the stratified sampling procedure previously described; however, random sampling does not occur when you use quota sampling. To il- lustrate, suppose you want to ensure that your sample of students includes 19% first-year students, 23% sophomores, 26% juniors, 22% seniors, and 10% graduate students because these are the percentages of the classes in the total popula- tion. A quota sampling technique would make sure you have these percentages, but you would still collect your data using haphazard techniques. If you didn't get enough graduate students in front of the student union, perhaps you could go to a graduate class to complete the sample. Although quota sampling is a bit more sophisticated than haphazard sampling, the problem remains that no restrictions are placed on how individuals in the various subgroups are chosen. The sample does reflect the numerical composition of the whole population of interest, but respondents within each subgroup are selected in a haphazard manner.

Telephone interviews

Almost all interviews for large-scale surveys are done this way. less expensive than face-to-face interviews, and they allow data to be collected relatively quickly because many interviewers can work on the same survey at once. computerized telephone survey techniques lower the cost of telephone surveys by reducing labor and data analysis costs

Focus group interviews

An interview strategy that is often used in industry -an interview with a group of about 6 to 10 individuals brought together for a period of usually 2-3 hours. Virtually any topic can be explored in a focus group. Often the group members are selected because they have a particular knowledge or interest in the topic. Be- cause the focus group requires people to both spend time and incur some costs traveling to the focus group location, participants usually receive some sort of monetary or gift incentive. The questions tend to be open-ended, and they are asked of the whole group. An advantage here is that group interaction is possible: People can respond to one another, and one comment can trigger a variety of responses. The interviewer must be skilled in working with groups both to facilitate communication and to deal with problems that may arise, such as one or two persons trying to dominate the discussion or hostility between group members. The group discussion is usu- ally recorded and may be transcribed. The tapes and transcripts are then analyzed to find themes and areas of group consensus and disagreement. Sometimes the transcripts are analyzed with a computer program to search for certain words and phrases. Researchers usually prefer to conduct at least two or three discussion groups on a given topic to make sure that the information gathered is not unique to one group of people. However, because each focus group is time-consuming and costly and provides a great deal of information, researchers don't do very many such groups on any one topic.

Double-barreled questions

Avoid double-barreled questions that ask two things at once. A question such as "Should senior citizens be given more money for recreation centers and food assistance programs?" is difficult to an- swer because it taps two potentially very different attitudes. If you are interested in both issues, ask two questions.

Negative wording

Avoid phrasing questions with negatives. This ques- tion is phrased negatively: "Do you feel that the city should not approve the proposed women's shelter?" Agreement with this question means disagreement with the proposal. This phrasing can confuse people and result in inaccurate answers. A better format would be: "Do you believe that the city should approve the proposed women's shelter?"

Refining Questions

Before actually administering the survey, it is a good idea to give the questions to a small group of people and have them think aloud while answering them. The participants might be chosen from the population being studied, or they could be friends or colleagues who can give reasonable responses to the questions. For the think-aloud procedure, you will need to ask the individuals to tell you how they interpret each question and how they respond to the response alternatives. This procedure can provide valuable information that you can use to improve the questions.

Sometimes, however, a perfectly balanced scale may not be possible or desirable. Example

Consider a scale asking a college professor to rate a student for a job or graduate program. This particular scale asks for comparative ratings of students: In comparison with other graduates, how would you rate this student's poten- tial for success? Lower 50%, Upper, 50%, Upper 25%, Upper 10%, Upper 5% Notice ABOVE that most of the alternatives ask people to make a rating within the top 25% of students. This is done because students who apply for such programs tend to be very bright and motivated, and so professors rate them favorably. The wording of the alternatives attempts to force the raters to make finer distinctions among generally very good students.

a question that illustrates some of the problems identified by Graesser et al.

Did your mother, father, full-blooded sisters, full-blooded brothers, daughters, or sons ever have a heart attack or myocardial infarction? This is an example of memory overload because of the length of the question and the need to keep track of all those relatives while reading the question. The respondent must also worry about two different diagnoses with regard to each relative. Further, the term myocardial infarction may be unfamiliar to most people. How do you write questions to avoid such problems? The following items are important to consider when you are writing questions.

Schwarz low-frequency scale example

Exercise example: less than once per month about once a month about once every two weeks about once a week more than once per week

Facts and demographics Questions

Factual questions ask people to indicate things they know about themselves and their situation. In most studies, asking some demographic information is necessary to adequately describe your sample. Age, gender, and ethnicity are typically asked. Depending on the topic of the study, questions on such information as income, marital status, employment status, and number of children might be included. Obviously, if you are inter- ested in making comparisons among groups, such as males and females, you must ask the relevant information about group membership. You may also need such information to adequately describe the sample. It is unwise to ask such questions if you have no real reason to use the information, however. Other factual information you might ask will depend on the topic of your survey. Each year, Consumer Reports magazine asks readers to tell them about the repairs that have been necessary on many of the products that the readers owned, such as cars and dishwashers. Factual questions about illnesses and other medical information would be asked in a survey of health and quality of life.

Nonprobability Sampling

In contrast to probability sampling, where the probability of every member is knowable, in nonprobability sampling, the probability of being selected is not known. Nonprobability sampling techniques are quite arbitrary. A population may be defined, but little effort is expended to ensure that the sample accurately represents the population. However, among other things, nonprobability sam- ples are cheap and convenient. Three types of nonprobability sampling are hap- hazard sampling, purposive sampling, and quota sampling.

Types of nonprobability sampling

In contrast to probability sampling, where the probability of every member is knowable, in nonprobability sampling, the probability of being selected is not known. Nonprobability sampling techniques are quite arbitrary. A population may be defined, but little effort is expended to ensure that the sample accurately represents the population. However, among other things, nonprobability sam- ples are cheap and convenient. Three types of nonprobability sampling are hap- hazard sampling, purposive sampling, and quota sampling.

Sample Size

It is important to note that a larger sample size will reduce the size of the confi- dence interval. Although the size of the interval is determined by several factors, the most important is sample size. Larger samples are more likely to yield data that accurately reflect the true population value. This statement should make intuitive sense to you; a sample of 200 people from your school should yield more accurate data about your school than a sample of 25 people.

Internet surveys

It is very easy to design a questionnaire for adminis- tration on the Internet. Both open- and closed-ended questions can be written and presented as Internet surveys to respondents. After the questionnaire is completed, the responses are immediately sent to the researcher. One of the first problems to consider is how to sample people. Most commonly, surveys are listed on search engines so people who are interested in a topic can discover that some- one is interested in collecting data. Some of the major polling organizations are building a database of people interested in participating in surveys. Every time they conduct a survey, they select a sample from the database and send an e-mail invitation to participate. The Internet is also making it easier to obtain samples of people with particular characteristics. There are all sorts of Internet special interest groups for people with a particular illness or of a particular age, marital status, or occupational group. Members of these groups use social networking sites, e-mail discussions, bulletin boards, and chat rooms to exchange ideas and information. Researchers can ask people who use these resources to volunteer for surveys. One concern about Internet data collection is whether the results will be at all similar to what might be found using traditional methods. Another problem with Internet data is the inherent ambiguity about the characteristics of the individuals providing information for the study. To meet ethical guidelines, the researcher will usually state that only persons 18 years of age or older are eligible; yet how is that controlled? People may also misrepresent their age, gender, or ethnicity. We simply do not know if this is a major problem. However, for most research topics it is unlikely that people will go to the trouble of misrepresenting themselves on the Internet to a greater extent than they would with any other method of collecting data. Kraut et al. (2004) and Buchanan and Williams (2010) describe the ethical issues of Internet research in detail.

Personal administration to of questionnaires to groups or individuals

Often re- searchers are able to distribute questionnaires to groups of individuals. This might be a college class, parents attending a school meeting, people attending a new employee orientation, or students waiting for an appointment with an advisor. An advantage of this approach is that you have a captive audience that is likely to complete the questionnaire once they start it. Also, the researcher is present so people can ask questions if necessary.

Mail surveys

Surveys can be mailed to individuals at a home or business address. This is a very inexpensive way of contacting the people who were se- lected for the sample. However, the mail format is a drawback because of po- tentially low response rates: The questionnaire can easily be placed aside and forgotten among all the other tasks that people must attend to at home and work. Even if people start to fill out the questionnaire, something may happen to distract them, or they may become bored and simply throw the form in the trash. Some of the methods for increasing response rates are described later in this chapter. Another drawback is that no one is present to help if the person becomes confused or has a question about something.

Labeling Response Alternatives

The examples thus far have labeled only the endpoints on the rating scale. Re- spondents decide the meaning of the response alternatives that are not labeled. This is a reasonable approach, and people are usually able to use such scales without difficulty. Sometimes researchers need to provide labels to more clearly define the meaning of each alternative. Here is a fairly standard alternative to the agree-disagree scale shown above: Strongly agree, Agree, Undecided Disagree, Strongly disagree. ABOVE type of scale assumes that the middle alternative is a "neutral" point half-way between the endpoints.

Interviews

The fact that an interview requires an interaction between people has important implications. First, people are often more likely to agree to answer questions for a real person than to answer a mailed questionnaire. Good interviewers be- come quite skilled in convincing people to participate. Thus, response rates tend to be higher when interviews are used. The interviewer and respondent often establish a rapport that helps motivate the person to answer all the questions and complete the survey. People are more likely to leave questions unanswered on a written questionnaire than in an interview. An important advantage of an interview is that the interviewer can clarify any problems the person might have in understanding questions. Further, an interviewer can ask follow-up questions if needed to help clarify answers.

important factors to consider when constructing questions

The next cards are about some of the most important factors to consider when constructing questions.

Your choice of alternative labels should be....

influenced by factors such as the population you are studying. --If you are studying people who generally exercise a lot, you will be more likely to use a higher-frequency scale than you would if you were studying people who generally don't exercise a great deal.

stratafied sampling

The population is divided into subgroups (also known as strata), and random sampling techniques are then used to select sample members from each stratum. Any number of dimensions could be used to divide the population, but the dimension (or dimensions) chosen should be relevant to the problem under study. For instance, a survey of sexual attitudes might stratify on the basis of age, gender, and amount of education because these factors are related to sexual attitudes. Stratification on the basis of height or hair color would be ridiculous for this survey. Stratified random sampling has the advantage of a built-in assurance that the sample will accurately reflect the numerical composition of the various sub- groups. This kind of accuracy is particularly important when some subgroups represent very small percentages of the population. For instance, if African Americans make up 5% of a city of 100,000, a simple random sample of 100 peo- ple might not include any African Americans; a stratified random sample would include 5 African Americans chosen randomly from the population. In practice, when it is important to represent a small group within a population, researchers will "oversample" that group to ensure that a representative sample of the group is surveyed; a large enough sample must be obtained to be able to make infer- ences about the population. Thus, if your campus has a distribution of students similar to the city described here and you need to compare attitudes of African Americans and Whites, you will need to sample a large percentage of the African American students and only a small percentage of the White students to obtain a reasonable number of respondents from each group.

Formatting the Questionnaire

The printed questionnaire should appear attractive and professional. It should be neatly typed and free of spelling errors. Respondents should find it easy to identify the questions and the response alternatives to the questions. Leave enough space between questions so people don't become confused when read- ing the questionnaire. If you have a particular scale format, such as a 5-point rating scale, use it consistently. Don't change from 5- to 4- to 7-point scales, for example. It is also a good idea to carefully consider the sequence in which you will ask your questions. In general, it is best to ask the most interesting and important questions first to capture the attention of your respondents and motivate them to complete the survey. Roberson and Sundstrom (1990) obtained the highest return rates in an employee attitude survey when important questions were pre- sented first and demographic questions were asked last. In addition, it is a good idea to group questions together when they address a similar theme or topic. Doing so will make your survey appear more professional, and your respondents will be more likely to take it seriously.

Purposive sampling

The purpose is to obtain a sample of people who meet some predetermined criterion. Sometimes at a large movie complex, you may see researchers asking customers to fill out a questionnaire about one or more movies. They are always doing purposive sampling. Instead of sampling anyone walking toward the theater, they take a look at each person to make sure that they fit some criterion—under the age of 30 or an adult with one or more chil- dren, for example. This is a good way to limit the sample to a certain group of people. However, it is not a probability sample.

Simplicity

The questions asked in a survey should be relatively simple. People should be able to easily understand and respond to the questions. Avoid jargon and technical terms that people won't understand. Sometimes, however, you have to make the question a bit more complex—or longer—to make it easier to understand. Usually this occurs when you need to define a term or describe an issue prior to asking the question. Thus, before asking whether someone ap- proves of Proposition J, you will probably want to provide a brief description of the content of this ballot measure. Likewise, if you want to know about the fre- quency of alcohol use in a population, asking, "Have you had a drink of alcohol in the past 30 days?" may generate a slightly different answer than "Have you had a drink of alcohol (meaning one full can of beer, shot of liquor, or glass of wine) in the past 30 days?" The latter case is probably closer to what you would be interested in knowing.

Defining the Research Objectives

When constructing questions for a survey, the first thing the researcher must do is explicitly determine the research objectives: What is it that he or she wishes to know? The survey questions must be tied to the research questions that are being addressed. Too often, surveys get out of hand when researchers begin to ask any question that comes to mind about a topic without considering exactly what useful information will be gained by doing so. This process will usually require the researcher to decide on the type of questions to ask.

Confidence Intervals

When researchers make inferences about populations, they do so with a certain degree of confidence. Here is a statement that you might see when you read the results of a survey: "The results from the survey are accurate within 3 percentage points, using a 95% level of confidence." What does this tell you? Suppose you asked students to tell you whether they prefer to study at home or at school, and the survey results indicate that 61% prefer to study at home. Using the same de- gree of confidence, you would now know that the actual population value is prob- ably between 58% and 64%. -The confidence interval gives you information about the likely amount of the error or the sampling error (margin of error)

Using survey research as a complement to experimental research findings ex:

Winograd and Soloway (1986) conducted experiments on the conditions that lead to forgetting where we place something. To study this topic using survey methods, Brown and Rahhal (1994) asked both younger and older adults about their actual experiences when they hid something and later forgot its location. They reported that older adults take longer than younger adults to find the object and that older adults hide objects from potential thieves, whereas younger people hide things from friends and relatives. Interestingly, most lost objects are eventually found, usually by accident in a location that had been searched previously. This research illustrates a point made in previous chapters that multiple methods are needed to understand any behavior

Number of Response Alternatives

With closed-ended questions, there are a fixed number of response alternatives. In public opinion surveys, a simple "yes or no" or "agree or disagree" dichotomy is often sufficient. In more basic research, it is often preferable to have a suffi- cient number of alternatives to allow people to express themselves—for example, a 5- or 7-point scale ranging from "strongly agree to strongly disagree" or "very posi- tive to very negative." Such a scale might appear as follows: Strongly agree ____ ____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Strongly disagree

Nonverbal scales for children

Young children may not understand the types of scales we've just described, but they are able to give ratings. Think back to the example that uses drawings of faces to aid in the assessment of the level of pain that a child is experiencing. Similar face scales can be used to ask children to make ratings of other things such as a toy.

sampling frame

the actual population of individuals (or clusters) from which a random sample will be drawn. Rarely will this perfectly coincide with the population of interest—some biases will be introduced. Example: If you define your popu- lation as "residents of my city," the sampling frame may be a list of telephone numbers that you will use to contact residents between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. This sampling frame excludes persons who do not have telephones or whose schedule prevents them from being at home when you are making calls. Also, if you are using the telephone directory to obtain numbers, you will exclude persons who have unlisted numbers.

Sampling Error

the likely amount of the error when you study one sample, the obtained result may deviate from the true population value because of sampling error.

Semantic differential scale

a mea- sure of the meaning of concepts that was developed by Osgood and his associates (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). Respondents rate any concept—persons, objects, behaviors, ideas—on a series of bipolar adjectives using 7-point scales, as follows: Smoking cigarettes Good Strong Active ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ Bad ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ Weak ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ Passive Research on the semantic differential shows that virtually anything can be meas- ured using this technique. Ratings of specific things (marijuana), places (the stu- dent center), people (the governor, accountants), ideas (abortion, tax reduction), and behaviors (attending church, using public transit) can be obtained. A large body of research shows that the concepts are rated along three basic dimensions: the first and most important is evaluation (e.g., adjectives such as good-bad, wise-foolish, kind-cruel); the second is activity (active-passive, slow-fast, excit- able-calm); and the third is potency (weak-strong, hard-soft, large-small).

Using closed-ended questions

a more structured approach; they are easier to code and the response alternatives are the same for everyone. are more likely to be used when the dimensions of the variables are well defined.

Two ways of Administering Surveys

a written questionnaire or an interview format

How large should the sample be?

can be determined using a mathematical formula that takes into account the size of the confidence interval and the size of the population you are studying. page 145 table for a sample percentage to be accurate within plus or minus 3%, 5%, and 10%, given a 95% level of confidence. Note first that you need a larger sample size for increased accuracy. With a population size of 10,000, you need a sample of 370 for accuracy within 5%; the needed sample size increases to 964 for accuracy within 3%. Note that sample size is not a constant percentage of the population

Using open-ended questions pros

can yield valuable insights into what people are thinking. are most useful when the researcher needs to know what people are thinking and how they naturally view their world

population

composed of all individuals of interest to the researcher. One population of interest in a large public opinion poll, for instance, might be all eligible voters in the United States. This implies that the population of interest does not include people under the age of 18, convicted prisoners, visi- tors from other countries, and anyone else not eligible to vote. You might con- duct a survey in which your population consists of all students at your college or university. With enough time and money, a survey researcher could conceivably contact everyone in the population. The United States attempts to do this every 10 years with an official census of the entire population. With a relatively small population, you might find it easy to study the entire population.

CATI system

computer-assisted telephone interview system the interviewer's questions are prompted on the computer screen, and the data are entered directly into the computer for analysis.

Another way to study changes over time...

conduct a panel study

probability sampling

each member of the population has a specifiable probability of being chosen. Probability sampling is required when you want to make precise statements about a specific population on the basis of the results of your survey

Survey Research

employs questionnaires and interviews to ask people to provide information about themselves—their attitudes and beliefs, demo- graphics (age, gender, income, marital status, and so on) and other facts, and past or intended future behaviors. a research tool that is used to ask people to tell us about themselves. have become extremely important as society demands data about issues rather than only intuition and anecdotes.

three methods of conducting interviews

face-to-face, telephone, and focus groups.

panel study

in which the same people are surveyed at two or more points in time. In a two-wave panel study, people are surveyed at two points in time; in a three-wave panel study, three surveys are conducted; and so on. Panel studies are particularly impor- tant when the research question addresses the relationship between one variable at "time 1" and another variable at some later "time 2."

SAMPLING FROM A POPULATION

the next cards are about sampling

potential problem in interviews

interviewer bias. This term de- scribes all of the biases that can arise from the fact that the interviewer is a unique human being interacting with another human. Thus, one potential problem is that the interviewer could subtly bias the respondent's answers by inadvertently showing approval or disapproval of certain answers. Or, if there are several inter- viewers, each could possess different characteristics (e.g., level of physical attrac- tiveness, age, or race) that might influence the way respondents answer. Another problem is that interviewers may have expectations that could lead them to "see what they are looking for" in the respondents' answers. Such expectations could bias their interpretations of responses or lead them to probe further for an an- swer from certain respondents but not from others—for example, when question- ing Whites but not people from other groups or when testing boys but not girls. Careful screening and training of interviewers help to limit such biases.

The social desirability response set

leads the individual to answer in the most socially acceptable way—the way that "most people" are perceived to respond or the way that would reflect most favorably on the person. can be a problem in many research areas, but it is probably most severe when the question concerns a sensitive topic such as violent or aggressive behavior, substance abuse, or sexual practices. However, it should not be assumed that people consistently misrepresent themselves. If the researcher openly and honestly communicates the purposes and uses of the research, promises to provide feedback about the results, and assures confidentiality, then the participants can reasonably be expected to give honest responses.

most easily studied using questionnaires or interviews...

many important variables—including attitudes, current emotional states, and self-reports of behaviors

studying the entire population would be a _______ _________ and can be avoided.....

massive undertaking by selecting a sample from the population of interest.

Schwartz high-frequency scale example

most alternatives indicate a high frequency of exercise. ex: less than twice a week about twice a week about four times a week about six times a week at least once each day

two basic techniques for sampling individuals from a population....

probability sampling and nonprobability sampling

Attitudes and beliefs Questions

questions about attitudes and beliefs focus on the ways that people evaluate and think about issues. Should more money be spent on mental health services? Are you satisfied with the way that police re- sponded to your call? How do you evaluate this instructor?

How do you create a completely unbiased sample?

randomly sample from a population that contains all individuals in the population. Second, you would contact and obtain completed responses from all individuals selected to be in the sample. Such standards are rarely achieved. Even if random sampling is used, bias can be introduced from two sources: the sampling frame used and poor response rates. Moreover, even though nonprobability samples have more potential sources of bias than probability samples, there are many reasons why they are used and should be evaluated positively.

Face-to-face interviews

require that the in- terviewer and respondent meet to conduct the interview. Usually the interviewer travels to the person's home or office, although sometimes the respondent goes to the interviewer's office. Such interviews tend to be quite expensive and time- consuming. Therefore, they are most likely to be used when the sample size is fairly small and there are clear benefits to a face-to-face interaction.

Using open-ended questions cons

require time to categorize and code the responses and are therefore more costly. Sometimes a respondent's response cannot be categorized at all because the response doesn't make sense or the person couldn't think of an answer.

Graphic rating scale

requires a mark along a continuous 100-millimeter line that is anchored with descriptions at each end. How would you rate the movie you just saw? Not very enjoyable --------------------------Very enjoyable A ruler is then placed on the line to obtain the score on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100.

The most common response set....

social desirability, or "faking good."

Behavior Questions

survey questions can focus on past behaviors or intended future behaviors. How many days last week did you exercise for 20 minutes or longer? How many children do you plan to have? Have you ever been so de- pressed that you called in sick to work?

An assumption that underlies the use of questionnaires and interviews is...

that people are willing and able to provide truthful and accurate answers.

Using Surveys to study relationships among variables and ways that behaviors change over time ex:

the Monitoring the Future project has been conducted every year since 1975—its purpose is to monitor the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American high school and college students. Each year, 50,000 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students participate in the survey.

Response Rate

the percentage of people in the sample who actually completed the survey. if you mail 1,000 questionnaires to a random sample of adults in your community and 500 are completed and returned to you, the response rate is 50%. Response rate is important because it indicates how much bias there might be in the final sample of respondents. Non-respondents may differ from respondents in any number of ways, includ- ing age, income, marital status, and education. The lower the response rate, the greater the likelihood that such biases may distort the findings and in turn limit the ability to generalize the findings to the population of interest.

Questionnaires

the questions are presented in written format and the re- spondents write their answers. There are several positive features of using ques- tionnaires. First, they are generally less costly than interviews. They also allow the respondent to be completely anonymous as long as no identifying informa- tion (e.g., name, Social Security number, or driver's license number) is asked. However, questionnaires require that the respondents be able to read and under- stand the questions. In addition, many people find it boring to sit by themselves reading questions and then providing answers; thus, a problem of motivation may arise. Questionnaires can be administered in person to groups or individuals, through the mail, on the Internet, and with other technologies.

With proper sampling....

we can use information obtained from the participants (or "respondents") who were sampled to precisely estimate char- acteristics of the population as a whole. Statistical theory allows us to infer what the population is like, based on data obtained from a sample (the logic underly- ing what is called statistical significance will be addressed in Chapter 13).

non-probability sampling

we don't know the probability of any particular member of the population being chosen.

Labeling alternatives when asking about the frequency of a behavior.

you might ask, "How often do you exercise for at least 20 minutes?" What kind of scale should you use to let people answer this question? You could list (1) never, (2) rarely, (3) sometimes, (4) frequently. These terms convey your meaning but they are vague.