I am building a social support survey utilizing three established surveys, and adding three of my own questions. I am tailoring this survey to examine a specific population of college students living in recovery. Is there a protocol or ethical procedure to this? The survey is initially going to be used for in-house purposes to inform programming needs. Eventually however, I may want to publish the results, or even the metric itself. What would I need to do other than letting the originators know? I am attaching a copy of the survey.
Hi Austin, what do you mean exactly by 'living in recovery'? From what? If some disorder, illness or disability be very very careful not to include questions that such people may not wish, or even be unable, to answer.
Mixing questionnaires can be tricky. Read up some good stats books on testing questionnaires for internal and external validity, evaluate its Cronbachs alpha, power and so forth. Test the questionnaire on a normal and representative sample first.
I don't think you need do more than inform the originators of the source questionnaires PROVIDING they are not copyrighted. A large number of commercial questionnaires have rights attached. Check these carefully before proceeding, and ensure you have all the appropriate permissions in place.
Best wishes!
Hi Austin, what do you mean exactly by 'living in recovery'? From what? If some disorder, illness or disability be very very careful not to include questions that such people may not wish, or even be unable, to answer.
Mixing questionnaires can be tricky. Read up some good stats books on testing questionnaires for internal and external validity, evaluate its Cronbachs alpha, power and so forth. Test the questionnaire on a normal and representative sample first.
I don't think you need do more than inform the originators of the source questionnaires PROVIDING they are not copyrighted. A large number of commercial questionnaires have rights attached. Check these carefully before proceeding, and ensure you have all the appropriate permissions in place.
Best wishes!
If you are adding your own items, I would suggest placing them after the existing instruments that you want to use. That way, the original measures will remain "intact" rather than being influenced by the new content.
In addition to letting the original authors know, and in some cases requiring their permission to do so, you may also need to obtain permission from National Ethics Committees (NEC) as designated by the World Health Organization on examining human subjects. In many cases, your university may have an ethics committee, permission from which will suffice in most cases. Some journal editors may require this permission before they can proceed further. You may contact the NEC in your country and/or in your institution whether this will be applicable in your case or not. The attached list of country-wise NECs may be of help to you. But contact the ethics committee in your institution first, if they have one.
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