Designing and Constructing Instruments for Social Research and Evaluation (Research Methods for the Social Sciences)

Designing and Constructing Instruments for Social Research and Evaluation is a comprehensive step-by-step guide to creating effective surveys, polls, questionnaires, customer satisfaction forms, ratings, checklists, and other instruments. Written in easy-to-understand language, this important text provides a systematic and commonsense approach to developing instruments for data collection and analysis. This book can be used by both those who are developing instruments for the first time and those who want to hone their skills, including students, agency personnel, program managers, and researchers. This book provides a thorough presentation of instrument construction, from conception to development and pre-testing of items, formatting the instrument, administration, and, finally, data management and presentation of the findings. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize how to create an instrument that will produce trustworthy and accurate data. To that end they have included guidelines for reviewing and revising the questionnaire to enhance validity and reliability. They also show how to work effectively with stakeholders such as instrument designers, decision-makers, agency personnel, clients, and raters or respondents. David Colton, Ph.D., is adjunct professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Graduate Studies in the program in Research, Statistics, and Evaluation, and in the Department of Health Care Administration, Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia. Robert W. Covert, Ph.D., is associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Graduate Studies in the program in Research, Statistics, and Evaluation. Part 1: Concepts 1. Introduction 2. Instruments and Social Inquiry 3. Measurement 4. Instrument Construction, Validity and Reliability Part 2: Application 5. Purposeful Creativity – First Steps in the Development of an Instrument 6. Pretesting 7. The Structure and Format of Selection Items 8. Guidelines for Writing Selection Items 9. Selection Items: Alternative Formats 10. Supply Items: Open-Ended Questions 11. Guidelines for Constructing Multi-item Scales Part 3: Organization and Administration 12. Organizing the Instrument 13. Administering the Instrument 14. Computers and Instrument Construction 15. Managing the Data and Reporting the Results