Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Attitude Survey





The measure of human attitudes is extremely important with regard to issues of equality in society. The attitude of the population influences law makers, and voter decisions in regard to changes in equal rights of individuals within the population. Historical data shows that the United States has faced several key issues in regard to equal rights ranging from the dissolution of slavery, race equality, and most recently, equal rights for LGBT couples to engage in legalized marriage. Psychologists use attitude surveys to interpret subjective attitudes of individuals into quantifiable empirical data. Individual attitudes differ from personality traits and interests because individual attitudes are commonly associated with a specific object or situation (Hogan, 2007). Individual attitudes are complex becuase they are composed of affective, behavioral, and cognitive actions, feelings, and thoughts that an individual displays in reaction to, or result of a particular object or situation (Hogan, 2007).
The format of the survey is built using a population-based approach to attitude assessment surveys, which is considered the most reliable method of obtaining general population information regarding attitude toward a particular topic (United Nations Entity for Equality and Empowerment of Women, 2012).  The survey will use the Likert scale, which is the most common ordinal scale used by survey researchers, and focuses on assessing individual opinions (Armstrong, n.d.). IN addition to the Likert scale, the survey will include initial questions primarily used in Interval or Ratio scales. This paper will discuss the various aspects of design, administration, scoring, interpretation of the survey along with any issues experienced during the development process.
Design
The target audience for this survey is two-fold and focuses on registered voters in various regions of the United States. The particular trait the survey is designed to measure is the attitude of both age brackets hold toward same-sex marriage equality. The survey should be administered via surveymonkey.com® to collect data and will use FaceBook® as the primary distribution medium. The decision to use FaceBook® as the distribution medium was made because FaceBook® advertising process can be configured for absolute targeting of the desired audience. The survey will be composed of ten items and should take no more than one to two minutes to complete. The Likert scale is usually composed of a minimum of five response categories that indicate how strongly the individual responds to the item or question (Armstrong, n.d.). The Interval or Ratio scale questions will be the first questions of the survey and are designed to acquire personal information of the survey taker like age, education level, and political and religious affiliation. This information is vital to the survey because the issue of marriage equality varies between these particular categories.
The second set of questions will use the Likert scale to measure the individual’s attitude toward the question or statement. The possible answers include strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree with corresponding scores of -1, -2, 0, +1, and +2. These corresponding scores and demographic data will be collected in an electronic survey report that will be used to correlate individual scores and demographics into a descriptive format. The items are considered to be the assertions and the responses are correlated using the Likert scale; a process referred to as the method of summated ratings (Hogan, 2007). The Likert scale proposes that one single attitude construct is the primary basis of all of the items in the survey. The statements or questions used in the survey are designed to acquire demographic data, and attitude of the various demographics toward marriage equality.
Administration, Scoring, and Interpretation
The survey is to be administered via electronic placement on FaceBook®. This process is accomplished using FaceBook’s advertising medium, which allows for drill-down targeting to specific audiences. This method allows researchers to gather data relevant to the survey, and minimizes potential for untargeted subjects to gain access to the survey. This is accomplished when a user who meets the set criteria logs into his or her FabeBook® account. On the side of the page, a box is displayed with the header “How do You Feel About Marriage Equality?” That statement is a hyperlink to the survey URL http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MF5VNPVthat is hosted by a well known Internet survey system, surveymonkey.com. The results of the survey are indicated on a scoring basis. The lower the score indicates that the individual displays lower favorability for the topic, whereas the higher score indicates a stronger level of favorability. The scores follow the same directionality, meaning the negative score always indicates a lower favorability. The scores equate to the raw data that is collected in mass distribution of the survey and compared to known norms of similar surveys, which will help provide an accurate interpretation. For example, if there is a known tendency to score a particular item very high, the raw scores of the test can be interpreted to take this tendency into account.
Issues Experienced in Survey Creation
As the population-based approach applies to this survey, the main goal of the survey is to ascertain the examinees demographics, and perceptions of same-sex marriage in the United States. With this in mind, I tried to design statements and questions to measure accurate demographic data and attitudes toward same-sex marriage amongst the various demographics. This form of data collection should provide a higher rate of validity of the interpretation that the lower scores equal a lower perception of same-sex marriage than the higher scores, and provide a cross-correlation between the score rankings and the demographic data. This process should result in a data set that shows how high or low marriage equality is favored amongst various demographics of the general populous. The items and questions used should provide a reliable gauge of observable behavior, previous feelings or belief factors, and current opinion and attitudes across the various demographics recorded. One of the most difficult factors was wording of the items and questions as to not lead the examinee to a particular outcome or response. Although I believe the questions are presented in a fairly neutral manner, I tried to word them to reduce the potential for misinterpretation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the attitude survey regarding marriage equality is created using the Likert scale method, and questions used in the Interval and Ratio scale to record and interpret a general opinion of marriage equality in comparison to various demographics within the populous. The survey also attempts to measure the attitude toward marriage equality based on the collected demographic data to validate different affective, behavioral, and cognitive components associated with the various demographic data. Thus, providing a validated comparison of attitude toward marriage equality amongst people in different age, educational, political, religious, and sexual preferences. A working version of this survey can be retrieved at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MF5VNPV

Hogan, T.P. (2007). Psychological testing: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.

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