PSY520 SNHU Big 5 Personality Inventory Questionnaire Critique Discussion
Using the resources from this module (2 attached readings), list several general principles that you believe are important for sound questionnaire design. Then choose one of the questionnaires listed below (Big 5 Personality Inventory-attached) and discuss the ways the questionnaire fits or violates your principles. It is fully understood that several of your principles may not easily be applied to these questionnaires because you do not know the exact background of how the scales were developed. Instead, focus on the principles you developed regarding item wording, response options, question order, and so on.
Big 5 Personality Inventory (Goldberg, 1993) (attached): One of the most commonly used measures of personality; scale on pages 34, scoring on page 4
When responding to your classmates, discuss the different principles you developed and how they compare and contrast to those of your classmates.
To complete this assignment, review the Discussion Rubric document (attached).
AFTER COMPLETING THE INITIAL POST, PLEASE ALSO RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING TWO STUDENTS REGARDING THE SAME TOPIC!
STUDENT ONE:
Rosnow and Rosenthal highlight several important factors to consider when conducting self-reports (2013). It is important to have truthful inputs that are accurate. One suggestion to overcome this is creating a self-report that is anonymous or researchers obtaining a certificate of confidentiality. Right to privacy is another issue; as a student with SNUH, it is in our best interest to avoid sensitive topics such as depression, anxiety, or sexuality. Rosnow and Rosenthal also talk about having participants relaying information that is reliable and how some fail to do so because they rate themselves higher. Another fascinating concern seems to be how valid the results are based on another statement from Rosnow and Rosenthal that included a longitudinal study from Offer, Kaiz, Howard and Bennett expressed how 28% of individuals said they disliked homework when they were younger but 58% of the adults actually stated they recalled hating homework. Interpretation of individuals scores is important for the self-reports. Therefore, our instructor emphasized the importance of questions for the survey and why this week we are submitting our questions and how we should interpret results and the type of scale we use.
One principle for myself is straying from open-ended questions because I want specific answers and the questionnaire should not take a long time to complete. For my questions, I want to use clear language and ensure I do not confuse anyone with the questions. A questionnaire should stay neutral and not attempt to use language that may sway an answer. The order of the questions also plays an important role in the survey and therefore we must submit our questions to the instructor for review. The big five uses a clear grading scale but I do feel that some of the questions may rely heavily on some of the answers from the participants that can skew results. For example, “tends to find fault with others” can be interpreted differently from others or “is depressed, blue” can be different from participants. All questions are closed-ended and they do not sway answers.
References
Rosnow, L. & Rosenthal, R. (2013). Beginning Behavioral Research: A Conceptual Primer (7th ed). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
STUDENT TWO:
Rosnow and Rosenthal (2013) have four important issues they urge their readers to consider when designing questionnaires. These four issues are the principles I think questionnaires should have implemented. The first issue is about dependency, meaning the questionnaire can be dependable. The second issue is about privacy for the participant and that they can choose to not answer any question they want. The third issue ensures the questions are valid and reliable. This issue is important when it comes to wording and how a specific question could be interpreted by its reader. The last issue deals with interpreting scores of individuals and comparing those scores to other individuals. This comes into play when a questionnaire ask participants to rate something (i.e. an emotion) that does not have a standard scale and this answer is compared to other people’s answers.
The Big Five Inventory (Goldberg, 1993) was the questionnaire I picked to examine. This questionnaire seems to pass the first issue of dependency. The questions seem to be able to be conducted anonymously. The second issue would pass for this questionnaire because all the points are scored independently from one another. If a participant choose to not answer one of the questions, they would not be penalized on the questionnaire. The third issue, value and reliability, may be a problem for this questionnaire. I don’t know if participants are able to reliably answer some of the questions asked in this survey. An example for a question
