Hi has anyone got experience of creating a mixed item grid response scale where certain responses are not available for a list of items, My experience tells me this is bad practice but a scale like this is being used in a national survey I have been working with. What are peoples views and how is this possible in an online survey ?, what software will allow a question to be displayed in this way ?
e.g strongly agree/disagree likert scale
N/A SD D NAorD A SA
item 1.
item 2. -
item 3 -
the N/A is only relevant for the first item on the list and is not an option for the remaining options. ?
I agree with you that this seems to be bad practice because it potentially makes the handling of the items a lot more complicated in psychometric and statistical analyses. For example, how would you treat the "NA" responses? As missing values?
Another reason to avoid this is that respondents develop expectations for question format as they move through a survey; changing format can be a distraction that adds to the mental effort required, likely reducing reliability. As I recall, Babbie's highly regarded book has some discussion on this, and probably reviews some relevant research.
If one decides to do it anyway, an online survey makes it much easier to implement. Online, there's not much need, or advantage, to setting up questions in a grid format. Just put each question on a separate screen/page, with the response options, and a Next button to proceed to the next question and its response options.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science
- Research Topics