Assessment, Statistics, and Research

What are the leading causes of death in the United States? Based on what you have read or learned from news sources, what did you expect to see in the top five? If you thought of one that is missing, perhaps it is in the top 10. Still, when you look at the numbers, you may be surprised to learn how few people die in a given year, given the size of the US population. My point in this post is that we ought to examine total data instead of being guided by the headlines of news stories and misleading charts when we want to understand a health or social condition. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the five leading causes of death in 2017 were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke. The report includes more causes, but I chose the top five based on the deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard population. When you add the numbers for the five causes, you find the top five causes of death accounted for 445 peo...

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...

The Modified Parenting Scale is a shortened version of the Parenting Scale developed by Arnold, O'Leary, Wolff, & Acker ( 1993 ). The 2007 study by Prinzie, Onghena, and Hellinckx revealed two dimensions, which are overreactivity and laxness. The reliability data were reported as acceptable to good in this sample of more than 1000 parents. There is some evidence of predictive validity. Inadequate parenting was positively related to problem behavior on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach- See ASEBA for details) and stress as measured by the Parenting Stress Index (Dutch version; See Doll 1989 for a review). The full version can be found on PsycTESTS . There are 20 items, which are rated on 7-point Likert scales. Ad... Learn more about conduting surveys in Creating Surveys on AMAZON Item Examples Laxness items 16 When my child does something I don’t like . . . I do something about it every time it happens – I often let it go. 12 When I w...

The Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS) is a frequently used short measure of relationship quality. using just three items, the KMSS has yielded highly reliable and validity data. Internal consistency (alpha) values were in the 90s range (see for example Schumm et al., 2008) . Validity data were also adequate when the KMSS was compared with longer measures like the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS; see for example Schumm et al., 1986 ). The scale was developed by Walter R. Schumm of Kansas State University. See additional references below. The scale may be used for educational and research purposes without permission. Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS): 3-items Items are rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (extremely dissatisfied) to 7 (extremely satisfied). 1.       How satisfied are you with your marriage? 2.       How satisfied are you with your husband/wife as a spouse? 3.    ...

The toxic triad is commonly known as the Dark Triad .  The triad consists of three sets of personality traits  representing features of  Narcissistic,  Psychopathic,  and  Machiavellian   personality clusters.  The Dirty Dozen Scale Psychological Scientists Peter Jonason and Gregory Webster developed a scale known as the Dirty Dozen (2010), which uses 12-items to identify key features of this “Dark” or Toxic Triad. Here’ are the 12 items 1.       I tend to manipulate others to get my way. 2.       I tend to lack remorse. 3.       I tend to want others to admire me. 4.       I tend to be unconcerned with the morality of my actions. 5.       I have used deceit or lied to get my way. 6.       I tend to be callous or insensitive. 7.       I have used...

The  Moral Foundations Questionnaire  ( MFQ ) is available online and as a download. You can take the test online and get your scores. The MFQ is designed to measure the five core moral foundations derived from Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) developed by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. (See references at the end of this post). The MFQ evaluates moral foundations based on answers to questions. There are five moral foundations in the MFQ: Care-Harm Equality-Fairness; aka fairness/cheating Loyalty-Betrayal Authority-Respect; aka Authority/subversion Purity-Sanctity aka Sanctity/degradation I added the aka because you will find somewhat different words for the foundations in some articles. See this page for a description of Moral Foundations Theory Researchers can use the MFQ items to create their own surveys. The current version (2018) is a 30-item version known as the MFQ30. There is also a shorter version known as the MFQ20, which has 20 items, 4-items for ea...

Behavioral scientists commonly refer to four types of measurement or scales. Understanding the types of measurement or scales is important because some numbers have limited applications and they are misused. The four types of measurement scales are as follows: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio. This information is taken from Chapter 5 of Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors Nominal Scale This is often called the naming scale. The numbers allow researchers to classify people as belonging in a group. The numbers cannot be added or ranked. If we were studying treatment of people with depression we might form two groups simply numbers 1 and 2 for those getting treatment and those on a waiting list for treatment. All people in the study have a number but the number is just a classification. Numbers on sports team players may represent positions. Ordinal Scale The ordinal scale is a ranking scale. Performance can be ranked in order of high to low. You can r...