Overview

This chapter is about best practices and common issues in designing surveys.

As suggested in some review papers Simms (2008), the construction of a new survey or scale consists of several steps:

• Review the literature to define the construct of interest and to find existing or related measures of the construct

  • Is the new measure really needed?

  • Define the constructs.

• Interview respondents to see whether respondents think the same way about the construct as you do

• Reconcile potential differences between the literature review and the interview data

• Develop items

• Validate with experts

• Do cognitive pretesting to see how respondents understand and respond to each item

• Run large-scaled reliability and validity tests

I will try to cover as many of these topics as possible. Currently, there is a chapter on response options and one containing some recommended readings. There is also a Statistics section on this website that covers factor analyses.

References

Gehlbach, H., & Brinkworth, M. E. (2011). Measure twice, cut down error: A process for enhancing the validity of survey scales. Review of General Psychology, 15(4), 380–387. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025704

Simms, L. J. (2008). Classical and modern methods of psychological scale construction: Scale construction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 414–433. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00044.x