Psychology 148 Test Construction Project

For this project, small groups of (three or four of) you will each make up your own "psychological test" and report on data arising from a small-sample (the class) tryout of the items. The test or questionnaire must be very short, for practical reasons. Nevertheless, you are free to attempt to measure any psychological construct you like: some ability, personality construct, or any kind of attitude. Good luck.

On Tuesday, March 28, you are to bring "camera ready" copy of your instrument (test or questionnaire) to class; some rules:

• Your instrument must be computer-printed (or typed) for legibility.
• It must fit on two 8.5 x 11 (letter size) pieces of paper (or less; format compactly if possible to reduce xerox costs).
• Identify your questionnaire with your group name in the upper-right hand corner.
• It should have at least 5, but no more than 10, questions.
• All of your questions should be directed toward the measurement of the construct you intend. On a cover-sheet for the questionnaire packet, we will ask for the respondent's sex and undergraduate GPA [for you to use as (potential) background variables in your analysis]; do not ask any other (potentially identifying) questions.
• We will distribute packets containing everyone's tests/questionnaires to everyone in the class on Thursday, March 30. Because the class is small for data collection purposes, it is very important that everyone be there to pick up the packets, answer the questions, and return them; otherwise, you will all have very little information about your items.
• If your questions have directly-machine-codable responses (e.g., multiple choice, true-false, or Likert-type formats), and if you supply a key (on a separate sheet of paper, identified with the last four digits of your student number), we will supply you with some standard item-analysis statistics (p+, rpt-bis, coefficient alpha, etc.) on Tuesday or Thursday, April 4 or 6 (exact date TBA). If your questions have any free-response format, you will just get-back those responses (this is probably twice-undesirable: if you make the questions too much work to answer, some persons may not do it properly; and you will have to code the data for analysis yourself and that will be time-consuming).

Although your tests/questionnaires are constructed as a group project, each of you must write your own individual report on which your grade will be based. You may discuss the contents of your reports with your groups, but the actual document must be your own individual work. Your written (typed!) report on your scale construction effort is due on Thursday, April 27. Your report should include 1) A description of the purpose of your test or questionnaire (1-3 pp.), 2) the items themselves and your method for constructing them (1-3 pp.), and 3) a summary of the performance of the items and an evaluation of the items (or a subset of them) for measuring whatever you are trying to measure (3-5 pp).

To view some examples of scales constructed by students in previous years, click on any of the entries below. (These are shorter, for the most part, than the questionnaires you will design, because they were done following slightly different rules.)

• An Agressiveness Questionnaire (3903) / Item Analysis Output
• A Verbal Proficiency Test (0325) / Item Analysis Output
• An Extraversion Questionnaire (0600) / Item Analysis Output
• A Reading Interest Survey (3495) / Item Analysis Output
• A Questionnaire on Attitudes toward Ethnicity (4561) / Item Analysis Output

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