Dear Ivo Carneiro de Sousa,

Thank you for pointing out that US Americans often refer to themselves as Americans, when all of the countries you have mentioned and others such as: Peru, Columbia, Ecuador and other are also in the Americas, or America and the people are also therefore American.  Yet as a US American I too am guilty of calling myself an American.

Well technically I am as American as a person born and raised in Mexico. But the way it is used in the US, we are the ONLY "Americans". When US Americans go to Europe they are referred to as 'Americans' which further perpetuates this concept. The main problem is the Canadians are not going to call themselves Canadian Americans or Americans per se, the people from Brazil are not going to call themselves Brazillian Americans or Americans per se and the people from Peru are not going to call themselves Peruvian Americans or Americans per se. The US people are not going to call themselves US Americans. Because America is a melting pot and because of its name, US, it has adopted the word Americans to refer to its people.

But I do understand that anyone living or born in any one of the Americas other than the US may have an issue with the US Americans calling themselves Americans...

You have taught me that I MUST refer to my self as a US American instead of American,  and to be more sensitive to the many Americans that are from other countries. Thank you!

Dear Maitham Al Lami,

Now the above being said, I would suggest a survey with a rating or ranking of the intensity of 'feelings' or ranking of agreement or disagreement of a particular statement or question could be used to measure the attitudes of non-US American teachers toward US American culture. Why? Because you are asking for opinions and a survey or questionnaire can capture opinions if a preliminary discussion of the existing opinions can capture most of  the existing opinions, attitudes and perceptions of US teachers and is the bases for the questions to be asked on the survey AND there is still a place for write in of he or her opinions, attitudes and perceptions. Also the results can later be quantified and plotted on a graph [even those written in].

Let us say there is a 10 point ranking system in the survey. Statements could be the 'assumptions' that All US Americans believe a certain credo or behave a certain way, have a certain attitude, have certain perceptions  etc.

To what degree does the responder to each question or statement on the questionnaire/survey agree or disagree. Examples:

What percentage of the population do you the responder believe US Americans do or act a certain way? 

10% to 100% in 10 x 10 % increments

To what degree you believe Americans act or think or ?? a certain way?

0 - 10 

or 

0, 1% to 100% in ten increments

To what degree you agree or disagree with the following statement about ALL US Americans?

0 - 10 , in ten increments

I think you can also ask for a subjective written in response to do statistics on how many or % of responders say/wrote in the SAME thing.

I hope this helps,

Another way is to have a room full of people with electronic voting devices. Make a statement and allow the audience to answer. However this limits the amount of people who can represent the whole or many. The survey I mention above can be done electronically in an email with an immediate return response could also be linked to data analysis/statistics as the survey continues and can reach as many people that you send it to. You could even have the people filling it out send the link to the survey to other people that they know. And if you have inclusion and exclusion criteria the link would not be directly to the survey but to a screening to see if the person is eligible to take the survey. It would give this person the opportunity to take part, but who must be 'screened' for eligibility first. Also you may want to exclude those who may be biased because they are related to or friends with US American citizens, or teachers. 

I hope this helps you as you design your study!

Respectfully,

Jeanetta Mastron

Dear Ivo Carneiro de Sousa,

Thank you for pointing out that US Americans often refer to themselves as Americans, when all of the countries you have mentioned and others such as: Peru, Columbia, Ecuador and other are also in the Americas, or America and the people are also therefore American.  Yet as a US American I too am guilty of calling myself an American.

Well technically I am as American as a person born and raised in Mexico. But the way it is used in the US, we are the ONLY "Americans". When US Americans go to Europe they are referred to as 'Americans' which further perpetuates this concept. The main problem is the Canadians are not going to call themselves Canadian Americans or Americans per se, the people from Brazil are not going to call themselves Brazillian Americans or Americans per se and the people from Peru are not going to call themselves Peruvian Americans or Americans per se. The US people are not going to call themselves US Americans. Because America is a melting pot and because of its name, US, it has adopted the word Americans to refer to its people.

But I do understand that anyone living or born in any one of the Americas other than the US may have an issue with the US Americans calling themselves Americans...

You have taught me that I MUST refer to my self as a US American instead of American,  and to be more sensitive to the many Americans that are from other countries. Thank you!

Dear Maitham Al Lami,

Now the above being said, I would suggest a survey with a rating or ranking of the intensity of 'feelings' or ranking of agreement or disagreement of a particular statement or question could be used to measure the attitudes of non-US American teachers toward US American culture. Why? Because you are asking for opinions and a survey or questionnaire can capture opinions if a preliminary discussion of the existing opinions can capture most of  the existing opinions, attitudes and perceptions of US teachers and is the bases for the questions to be asked on the survey AND there is still a place for write in of he or her opinions, attitudes and perceptions. Also the results can later be quantified and plotted on a graph [even those written in].

Let us say there is a 10 point ranking system in the survey. Statements could be the 'assumptions' that All US Americans believe a certain credo or behave a certain way, have a certain attitude, have certain perceptions  etc.

To what degree does the responder to each question or statement on the questionnaire/survey agree or disagree. Examples:

What percentage of the population do you the responder believe US Americans do or act a certain way? 

10% to 100% in 10 x 10 % increments

To what degree you believe Americans act or think or ?? a certain way?

0 - 10 

or 

0, 1% to 100% in ten increments

To what degree you agree or disagree with the following statement about ALL US Americans?

0 - 10 , in ten increments

I think you can also ask for a subjective written in response to do statistics on how many or % of responders say/wrote in the SAME thing.

I hope this helps,

Another way is to have a room full of people with electronic voting devices. Make a statement and allow the audience to answer. However this limits the amount of people who can represent the whole or many. The survey I mention above can be done electronically in an email with an immediate return response could also be linked to data analysis/statistics as the survey continues and can reach as many people that you send it to. You could even have the people filling it out send the link to the survey to other people that they know. And if you have inclusion and exclusion criteria the link would not be directly to the survey but to a screening to see if the person is eligible to take the survey. It would give this person the opportunity to take part, but who must be 'screened' for eligibility first. Also you may want to exclude those who may be biased because they are related to or friends with US American citizens, or teachers. 

I hope this helps you as you design your study!

Respectfully,

Jeanetta Mastron

Hello Maitham,

you may want to try an associative experiment suggesting a range of words related to American culture as stimuli and then looking at responses from your participants. It is quick and the procedure itself is not very complicated.

Good luck,

Ivo Carneiro de Sousa

Thank you very much for your comment and question, I have been to Venezuela once, I do agree with you that such sensitivity exists toward using “American” to denote what is related to the United States. However, meaning associated with the term American, as perceived by most English language speakers around the world, is almost uniquely related to the United States and it would be rather confusing in the study to suggest otherwise especially that the study is to be conducted in the Middle East, where the United States is very often referred to as simply America. But, of course, I will make sure to clearly define the term. Thanks 

Jeanetta Mastron

Thank you very much for the important points that you have presented to account for the proposed measurement models. This is very helpful indeed. I had been, simply, thinking of a standard 5 point Likert scale in which responders agree or disagree to a set of statements that some are positively and others are negatively describing Americans’ beliefs and behaviors. 

Now, thinking about your comments, I agree that investigating the intensity of attitudes is important and a model whose items are scaled percentagewise could be very effective in pointing to the attitude intensity. Also, it has been pointed out to me by a research methodologist at Barry University, that the instrument could be constructed and administered in such away that later allows for conducting factor analysis to determine whether some items are significantly correlated. Thanks. 

Natalia Kudriavtseva 

Thank you for your comment. This is really interesting.

Dear Maitham Al Lamin of Barry University,

I am sure you have some statistics background, but I offer the following sites which discuss the advantages of using a survey or questionnaire and the types of questions in order to use the answers as nominal data, as well as the disadvantages of specific types of surveys [ land line, cell phone, internet public vs specific targeted populations etc]. 

I hope this will help you to DESIGN your survey and survey questions in order to gain the best and most accurate responses/outcome.

http://survey.cvent.com/blog/customer-insights-2/data-types-using-nominal-data-in-survey-research

http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/collecting-survey-data/

Respectfully,

Jeanetta Mastron

Posted at 6:12 pm 11-13-15 

http://survey.cvent.com/blog/customer-insights-2/data-types-using-nominal-data-in-survey-research

http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/collecting-survey-data/

Dear Maitham Al Lamin of Barry University, School of Education, Florida, United States

You are most welcome! I am glad my education in clinical research can lend its hand in helping you to design your study. I am happier that it led you to discuss this with a research methodologist [statistician?] at Barry University. It sounds like the research methodologist is referring to simplifying or reducing [redundant] data using a principal factor. The other reason for using factor analysis is when looking for causal factors or models. These are the two most basic reasons to do principal factoring, but there are many others.

The following tutorials on factor analysis may help you:

The first is more about definition, but also includes information on SPSS [Statistical Package for Social Sciences], now known as IBM SPSS, and includes some ‘freebies, templates & downloads and a free TRIAL” –

Conduct and Interpret a Factor Analysis – What is Factor Analysis

http://www.statisticssolutions.com/factor-analysis-2/

While the second tutorial is a UC Denver SPSS tutorial entitled -                             Factor Analysis in SPSS 

http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/nursing/Documents/PDF/FactorAnalysisHowTo.pdf

The above being said, I am not sure if you will be using SPSS and if you would use the same version[s] as shown in these examples, but none the less these tutorials may help you.

Thank you for your compliments.

Respectfully,

Jeanetta Mastron

FYI: I would be MOST interested in the outcomes of your study and reading any paper you may write and publish.

Posted 11-13-15 at 6:49 pm

Hello Maitham,

Are you familiar with Q Methodology? It might be what you are looking for. Q Methodology is suitable for investigating attitudes. I believe it might reveal very intriguing patterns in your data. 

Good luck.

Dear Maijastiina Mäntysaari of University of Jyväskylä,

I think because Q Methodology employs a systematic study of subjectivity to measure opinion/viewpoints, that it would be ideal for Maitham Al Lami to use because  it encompasses or is subject to factor analysis, and in addition it is  a mixed methodology: "qualitative judgements " in defining the problems and designing the questions and "quantitative  options for analysis".

It comes the closest to the process that I have discussed previously and what the methodologist who has directed Maitham has recommended.

Thank you for putting a name on it! :)

Thank you for posting your answer! :) 

Dear Maitham Al Lami [and all],

I am attaching a link to a good 2005 paper on this subject along with a link with a 2014 short introduction and a 2013  article on                     Q  Methodology. 

Because I am not in the social or psychological sciences I am not familiar with this name.  We have studied this with statistics and Z - test etc but the math books do not put a Q-Methodology name on it. 

The 2008  article, Q FACTOR ANALYSIS (Q-METHODOLOGY) AS DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE  by Gabor Manuela Rozalia, states that SPSS can not handle the factor analysis used in Q Methodology, but that LISREL can. You might try the following link for LISREL: https://srmo.sagepub.com/view/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-social-science-research-methods/n501.xml?rskey=HCUcDq&row=18

OR the following Book 2nd edition 2013:Q Methodology

By Bruce McKeown, Dan B. Thomas:

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jbYgAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=LISREL+and+q+methodology&ots=6nZFcIlPQx&sig=ClyMdlFgmSwOvb-H-euGljQpttA#v=onepage&q=LISREL%20and%20q%20methodology&f=false 

Hope this helps!

Thank you for posting this question,

Respectfully,

Jeanetta Mastron

http://qmethod.org/articles/vanExel.pdf

http://betterevaluation.org/evaluation-options/qmethodology

http://eprints.ulster.ac.uk/29539/

http://www.itrn.ie/uploads/1287_Eghbalighazijahani[1].pdf

http://steconomiceuoradea.ro/anale/volume/2008/v4-management-marketing/159.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jbYgAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=LISREL+and+q+methodology&ots=6nZFcIlPQx&sig=ClyMdlFgmSwOvb-H-euGljQpttA#v=onepage&q=LISREL%20and%20q%20methodology&f=false

https://srmo.sagepub.com/view/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-social-science-research-methods/n501.xml?rskey=HCUcDq&row=18

Siwatu’s (2007) Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy (CRTSE) and Culturally Responsive Teaching Outcome Expectancy (CRTOE) scales may be something to look into.  These tools have already been used in a similar type of research.  You can look it up on http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=jpme.  It would be interesting to see if you come up with the same results.

Look for matched guise technique and for Katz and Braly's research