Imagine you were developing a survey to measure college student attitudes toward recycling. What would be your objectives and how would you operationalize each objective?

PART 1

 

Answer the following questions. Minimum 300 words, must have in-text citation and, references in APA format

 

10.1  Surveys allow us to collect information so that we can describe and compare how people feel about things (attitudes), what they know (knowledge), and what they do (behaviors).

· ·How would you compare the similarities and differences between a survey and a psychological test?

· Pick one of the following two scenarios to address for the second part of your response to this week’s discussion prompt:

1.  Imagine you were developing a survey to measure college student attitudes toward recycling. What would be your objectives and how would you operationalize each objective?

2.  What steps would you follow to gather evidence of reliability/precision and validity for a survey designed to measure high school students’ nutritional habits?

 

 

PART 2

 

Need responses for following discussion posts – minimum 150 words for each response and must have in-text citation and references in APA format to support the responses.

 

Response 1

Survey and Psychological Test

The concept of the survey and psychological test are highly instrumental when it comes to acquiring viable data from respondents that can help in subsequent analysis and decision-making. This is because of the first-hand or primary information that comes with these techniques of data collection (Huang et al., 2020). The prime objective of utilizing surveys and the psychological test is to allow for objectivity and reliability to get realized while dealing with raw data.

Similarities

1. They both involve asking a specific question for the purpose of data collection.

2. Surveys and psychological tests entail acquiring primary data from respondents

3. In both scenarios, the techniques involve analyzing the feedback provided and arriving at relevant conclusions.

Differences

1. A survey may or may not apply a scoring system while psychological tests involve either quantitative or qualitative scoring.

2. A survey is geared towards evaluation while a psychological test is geared towards assessment

3. A survey is concerned with feedbacks and opinions from respondents while a psychological test is concerned with preferences, aptitude, personal traits, and cognitive abilities just to mention a few.

Part 2: Question 1

In this case of collecting data from college students, there exist diversified factors that should get prioritized for the desired outcome to materialize.

Objectives

The key objectives when addressing this survey would include identifying the impact of recycling on college students, identifying the benefits of recycling to students, understanding different forms of recycling that get executed in college, and acquiring information on ways to improve recycling in college students. These objectives are highly integral since they encompass every aspect of recycling and how the students relate to this subject matter. The first step is to comprehend the impact recycling has on the livelihood or welfare of the mentioned college students. Recycling is an important area that constitutes vast repercussions on the lives of individuals. It is critical to provide that once these objectives are formulated, an explicit procedure on how they can get operationalized follows (Zhou et al., 2021). Based on this fact, the necessary approaches towards operationalizing the associated objectives and goals must remain logical, feasible, and entirely viable. Such measure or strategy of ascertaining reliability promotes easy realization of the set objectives. Subsequently, the data acquired can get utilized in different dimensions to help in causing a significant impact.

Operationalization of the Objectives

Operationalizing the objectives would include observing three critical steps.

Main Concept Identification

The first step towards operations each objective highlighted above will include identifying main concepts from the objectives. For instance, the objective of identifying different forms of recycling in college may include concepts such as the nature of products used in the college and the mode of studies undertaken by the tutors.

Choosing A Variable

Once the concepts gave got identified for every objective identified, the next move towards operationalizing the objectives would include choosing a relevant variable. This assists in subsequent data collection and analysis processes by providing a ground upon which the process can get anchored (Huang et al., 2020). Variables are important in research studies since they define the logic in data management. Therefore, it is crucial to acquire the necessary and applicable variables that can get used in realizing the set goals and objectives of the survey.

Selecting Variable indicator 

Once the variable has been chosen, it is essential to become even more specific by selecting the most reliable indicators for each variable. This step enables the detailed acquisition of subjective data that will allow for productivity when addressing the aspect of operationalizing the set objectives (Zhou et al., 2021). The recycling process is a broad area that requires specificity for a reliable outcome to get realized. Different techniques like the use of questionnaires are effective in ensuring specificity.

References:

Huang, H., Tong, X., Cai, Y., & Tian, H. (2020). The gap between discarding and recycling: Estimate lifespan of electronic products by survey in formal recycling plants in China. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 156, 104700.

Zhou, Q., Du, Z., Liu, J., Liang, J., & Jiao, Y. (2021). Factors influencing green ship recycling: A conceptual framework and modeling. Journal of Cleaner Production, 322, 129155.

 

 

Response 2

 

How would you compare the similarities and differences between a survey and a psychological test? A few similarities within both surveys and psychological tests are (1) that they both often use the Likert-Scale to collect response data (though not always for psychological tests); (2) they both need to be reliable and valid; and (3) the data collected from both often help better inform the decision making process. A core difference is that psychological tests collect information from individuals and focus on individual outcomes, whereas surveys collect information from individuals and focus on group outcomes (Miller, L., & Lovler, R., 2020). Also, survey data is often focused on collecting data to assess group attitudes, opinions, or feelings about an area/issue/topic, and there is no right or wrong answer/response on the survey, whereas some psychological tests do assess concrete attributes such as specific knowledge, skills, or understanding, via test questions that do have right or wrong answers, such as multiple choice questions found on the SAT or ACT. 2.  What steps would you follow to gather evidence of reliability/precision and validity for a survey designed to measure high school students’ nutritional habits? To gather evidence of validity, I would work through the following steps: (1) develop survey items that measure high school student’s nutritional habits; (2) seek feedback from or consult with a group of nutritionists (and/or adolescence behavior experts) to identify and select the most relevant survey questions; (3) create a pilot study to better assess survey item difficulty and potential item discrimination (Partida, S., et. al., 2018); (4) determine the strength or measurement of the internal consistency of survey items (are the questions assessing similar areas for consistency within and of responses); (5) conduct a reliability assessment via a 2-week test-retest analysis to establish reliability data that confirms if results are similar and steady over time; (6) establish concurrent validity of the survey by administering the survey questionnaire along with two other established measurement tools/surveys that also assess high school student nutritional habits; (7) establish construct validity by administering the questionnaire to three groups of high school students with different general nutrition and sport nutrition knowledge (perhaps those activity enrolled in (1) an athletic team sport; (2) the drama/theatrical club; (3) those enrolled in the marching band or school orchestra) (Calella, P., et. al., 2017). References Calella, P., Iacullo, V. M., & Valerio, G. Validation of a General and Sport Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire in Adolescents and Young Adults: GeSNK. Nutrients. 2017 Apr 29; 9(5):439. doi: 10.3390/nu9050439. Miller, L., & Lovler, R. (2020). Foundations of psychological testing: A practical approach. Sage Publications. Partida, S., Marshall, A., Henry, R., Townsend, J., & Toy, A. (2018). Attitudes toward Nutrition and Dietary Habits and Effectiveness of Nutrition Education in Active Adolescents in a Private School Setting: A Pilot Study. Nutrients, 10(9), 1260.  https://doi.org/10.3390/nu1009126