the construction process of a survey that would ensure a valid & reliable assessment instrument
Most flaws in research methodology exist because the validity and reliability weren’t established (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2006). Thus, it is important to ensure a valid and reliable assessment instrument. So, in using any existing survey as an assessment instrument, one should report the instrument’s: development, items, scales, reports on reliability, and reports on validity through past uses (Creswell, 2014; Joyner, 2012). Permission must be secured for using any instrument and placed in the appendix (Joyner, 2012). The validity of the assessment instrument is key to drawing meaningful and useful statistical inferences (Creswell, 2014). Creswell (2014), stated that there are multiple types of validity that can exist in the instruments: content validity (measuring what we want), predictive or concurrent validity (measurements aligned with other results), construct validity (measuring constructs or concepts). Establishing validity in the assessment instrument helps ensure that it’s the best instrument to use for the right situation. Reliability in assessments instruments is when authors report that the assessment instrument has internal consistency and have been tested multiple times to ensure stable results every single time (Creswell, 2014).
Unfortunately, picking up an assessment instrument that doesn’t match the content exactly will not benefit anyone, nor will the results be accepted by the greater community. Modifying an assessment instrument that doesn’t quite match completely, can damage the reliability of this new version of the instrument, and it can take huge amounts of time to establish validity and reliability on this new version of the instrument (Creswell, 2014). Also creating a brand new assessment instrument would mean extensive pilot studies and tests, along with an explanation of how it was developed to help establish the instrument’s validity and reliability (Joyner, 2012).
Selecting a target group for the administration of the survey
Through sampling of a population and using a valid and reliable survey instrument for assessment, attitudes and opinions about a population could be correctly inferred from the sample (Creswell, 2014). Thus, not only is validity and reliability important but selecting the right target group for the survey is key. A targeted group for this survey means that the population in which information will be inferred from must be stratified, which means that the characters of the population are known ahead of time (Creswell, 2014; Gall et al. 2006). From this stratified population, is where a random sampling of participants should be selected from, to ensure that statistical inference could be made for that population (Gall et al., 2006). Sometimes a survey instrument doesn’t fit those in the target group. Thus it would not produce valid nor reliable inferences for the targeted population. One must select a targeted population and determine the size of that stratified population (Creswell, 2014). Finally, one must consider the sample size of the targeted group.
Administrative procedure to maximize the consistency of the survey
Once a stratified population and a random sample from that population have been carefully selected, there is a need to maximize the consistency of the survey. Thus, researchers must take into account the availability of sampling, through either mail, email, website, or other survey tools like SurveyMonkey.com are ways to gather data (Creswell 2014). However, mail has a low rate of return (Miller, n.d.), so face-to-face methods or online the use of online providers may be the best bet to maximize the consistency of the survey.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2014) Research design: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed method approaches (4th ed.). California, SAGE Publications, Inc. VitalBook file.
Gall, M. D., Joyce Gall, Walter Borg. Educational Research: An Introduction (8th ed.). Pearson Learning Solutions. VitalBook file.
Joyner, R. L. (2012) Writing the Winning Thesis or Dissertation: A Step-by-Step Guide (3rd ed.). Corwin. VitalBook file.
Miller, R. (n.d.). Week 5: Research study construction. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://breeze.careeredonline.com/p8v1ruos1j1/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal
Dr. Skylar (Sky) Hernandez 