CMST 300 Exam 2

process of coming to an agreement on term in corner of the sheet. theoretical definition.

identified to mark the presence or absence of a concept.

eg. love=holding hands, not touching shoulders

subcategories of a concept

eg. family love, romantic love, platonic love

created to define the procedures or steps used in measuring a concept. must be specific and unambiguous. HOW.

exhaustive and mutually exclusive

Categorical--Offers names or labels for attribute characteristics

eg. what is your primary source of news: internet, newspaper, radio, other

Categorical-ranked ordered attributes. distance between is irrelevant.

eg. what is class standing: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior

nominal and ordinal

interval and ratio

Continuous--distance relevant & standard, rank ordered, no true zero.

eg. choose the appropriate response: Newspapers are an important source of news for me: SA, A, N, D, SD

continuous--measurements are based on a true zero point.

eg. what is your age? __

consistency. do you get the same results every single time?

eg. standing on a scale 100 times and getting the same number (even if that number is wrong).

correctness. are we measuring what we say we're measuring?

eg. standing on a scale that says 392834 lbs, would be invalid.

Yes.

No.

Ratio: You can transform a high level measurement into a lower level, but you can't do the reverse.

convenience, purposive, snowball, quota

asking the people most convenient to fill out a survey

choosing people based on your knowledge of the population

eg. needing business students, waiting outside upper-level buisness class

ask a few, get them to locate the others

create a matrix of characteristics, assign proportions (%), collect people who match this. then use convenience, purposive, snowball or quota

Sample should represent population, not have potential bias, ensure representativeness of all members of the population. Gives everyone an equal chance.

group you want to study

group you want to participate in the study

the list of sampling units

WHO is the data collected from

establish a frame (list of people), use random # generator to choose people from the list.

population size divided by sample size to get K. every k^th person.

create subsets (like m/f), create a matrix that allows you to determine how many of each you need, then use simple or systematic sampling

• 1. Factual question, questionable answer.
• 2. Actions and reports of actions are different.
•    -social desirability/acquiescence response bias
• 3. Respondent's attitudes, interests can appear unstable
•   -result of taking survey, learning from survey, tiredness
• 4. Small changes in wording, big changes in answer.
• 5. Misinterpretation of word "often"
• 6. Respondents will answer even if they don't know

researcher provides response options, mutually exclusive, exhaustive

respondent answers in her/her own words

• -avoid double-barelled
• -avoid "not"
• -avoid bias writing (language)
• -write questions respondent is willing to answer
• -write questions relevant to respondent

• ·It is useful in describing a large population
• ·It enables the use of large samples
• ·It is flexible
• ·It offers many strengths with regard to measurement

• -in constructing response options, all participants' social experiences may not be accounted for
• -often removes social context from the study of communication

how well a measure covers the range of meanings or the dimensions, included within the concept

based on logical relationships among variables

are measure's categories meaningful to the people who are being assessed?