Validity and Reliability of Personal Spacing Behavior Verbal Frequency - Essay Example

?A Report on the Validity and Reliability of Personal Spacing Behavior Verbal Frequency Questionnaire More than just a physical construct, personal space is defined as “the distance component of interpersonal relations” (as cited in Gifford & Sacilotto, 1993). One of the earliest studies on this matter defines the concept as the space around an individual which is felt to be personal, belonging to self (Dosey & Meisels, 1969). Accordingly, this personal space can be manifested through various behaviors that may be consciously or unconsciously exhibited by individuals. Likewise, personal space is apparent in a broad range of situations – even in crowded conditions where in the physical space is very limited. An example of such situation happens in trains which are always packed with passengers. In this case, people engage in certain behaviors in order to maintain their personal space given the lack of physical space. Moreover, though it is not a physical concept, it is possible to quantitatively measure personal space through the use of a dimensional scale. In an attempt to do so, a questionnaire, in the form of a verbal frequency scale, was developed that contain ten items, describing different spacing behaviors that people engage in. In order to be more specific, these behaviors were limited to those commonly exhibited in the train – being a common setting for personal space studies. For each item, five response options were provided which are coded from 1 to 5 – the highest score corresponding to “Always” and the lowest to “Never”. However, there are two different types of items made – negatively and positively stated statements, respectively – such that coding of responses was reversed for those items which are negatively stated. The total scores for all the items would be added and the average would be computed. Given this scoring, the variable, personal space, can be operationally defined as the degree to which individuals engage in different behaviors in order to prevent interpersonal relations. The assumption is that individuals who keep a large personal space are likely to engage to different spacing behaviors; hence, a high score in the test entails a large personal space. Validity Measures In order to guarantee that that the questionnaire would measure what it is supposed to measure, two types of validity were established prior to the administration of the questionnaires. First, the content validity of the questionnaire was established by creating items that were all based on observations made by previous researchers in their studies of personal spacing behaviors in the train. As such, previous observations found in published journals were translated into personal statements that constitute the items covered. Second, while it is not a good indication of usefulness, the face validity of the questionnaire was maintained in order to appear acceptable and relevant to the respondents. The questions were worded in a simple manner to facilitate better understanding. Also, the questionnaire was formatted to the convenience of the respondents such that they would only have to encircle their response for each item. After establishing content and face validities, the questionnaires were then administered to ten respondents who can easily be contacted by the researcher any time. In order to ensure that the respondents can relate to the questions covered, only regular train passengers were chosen to participate in the study. Consequently, the same questionnaires were again administered to the same respondents after a period of one week in order to confirm the stability of results. All responses were coded and inputted in statistical software for analysis. Based on the results, the respondents scored high in the variable that was measured. This means that people do engage in certain activities and behaviors that would protect their personal space. These findings confirm the established theories and expectations on the said topic. As such, it can be deduced that the questionnaire possesses construct validity. Reliability Results The questionnaire was tested for both types of reliability measures: internal consistency and repeatability. For the first measure, three methods of reliability analysis were employed to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire: split-half method, coefficient alpha and item-total correlation. On the other hand, test-retest method was used to test the repeatability that refers to the consistency of measures on repeated applications. The items in the questionnaire were divided into halves and the scores on each half were correlated with one another to estimate the degree to which the items are equivalent to each other. The coefficient of equivalence by means of Spearman-Brown correlation formula was computed to be at 0.6 which indicates moderate correlation. Therefore, it is safe to presume that there is no significant difference in the scores derived from both forms of the scale. This entails that the respondents’ responses are consistent regardless of the particular sampling of items. To confirm, Cronbach’s alpha was computed and based on the obtained value of 0.6, it can be deduced that the scale is reliable. This means that the items in the scale measure the same thing – which is, personal space. On the other hand, in order to know if the test will yield consistent scores when administered successively after a particular time span, a test-retest method of reliability was employed. The post-test was given to the same sample a week after the administration of the pre-test. The results of the two sets of tests were compared through Pearson Product Moment Coefficient of Correlation. A correlation coefficient of 0.5 was obtained indicating a moderate positive association between the two sets of tests. This association was found to be significant at p Read More