Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  Have you seen the data? The word data  is a plural noun and takes a plural verb. See the following two examples. Our data do not indicate why a discrepancy might exist, but the findings could be consistent with those of Kakhnovets (2011) who found that Extraversion was a factor for women but not men in seeking psychotherapy (Sutton et al., 2018, p.20). There are data suggesting that certain infants appear to actively suppress activation of the attachment system (i.e., have trouble seeking care). Cassidy, 2000, p. 116) We write: Data are not data is. Data were not data was. Data reveal not data reveals. Data show not data shows. If we wanted to write about one item from a data set, we could use the singular form, datum. One score in a set of scores is a datum. Datum is rarely used. Learn More about analyzing and writing about research in  Buy Creating Surveys  on GOOGLE BOOKS   AMAZON References Cassidy, J. (2000). Adult romantic attac...

Photo for illustration purposes only “If Jesus is God, how could he create the world if he wasn’t born yet.”                      —Girl, age 7 It will be a while until this 7-year-old passes through the stage of concrete operations and begins to pull apart various mental constructs in a serious fashion. Along the way she’ll pick up many metaphors, including those that unravel men’s thinking about God hundreds of years ago. And all sorts of other metaphors. Americans are known for being religious and in particular, for being Christian; however, as is commonly said, the devil is in the details . In this post, I look at religious survey items to make a point about being careful when writing and interpreting survey items containing concepts with a range of meaning. ********* God- Who is God? Gallup keeps tabs on Americans’ views on God. In an interesting article, Hrynowski ( 2019 ...

So many people are creating surveys in schools, government agencies, and major corporations. Some are better than others. Here are seven tips. 1  Stay focused on your goal.  Avoid asking everything you can think of on a subject. Unfortunately, I've been on project teams that would not heed this advice. Participants get frustrated and leave surveys incomplete. 2  Ask only one question at a time. Have someone look at your items to see if they are confused about what you are asking. 3  Use easy-to-understand language. Know your audience and how they use language. Again, ask a few people to check your wording. 4  Write well. Some participants will drop out of your survey when they identify misspelled words, common punctuation errors, and problems of grammar. 5  Cover all possible answers. If you aren't sure you have listed every option, then add an "other" option with a place to write in another response. This may lessen the frustration of p...