Creating and Validating a Survey Scale - Essay Example

? CREATING AND VALIDATING A SURVEY SCALE Introduction Based on the current of affairs in the psychological platform,one of the feasible measures would involve the relationship between smoking and academic performance. Cigarette smoking is seen in almost every society in the world. Smokers are found in all the institutions of the society, including the learning institutions. Studies and research exercises conducted in the past shows that there is a relationship that exist between academic performance and smoking (Marianne, 2004). In addition, the past research findings also depicts a relationship between stress and smoking among students. In this regard, this research study will serve to evaluate the validity of these previous researches and to establish other knowledge on the subject. Therefore, this research will revolve around two hypotheses that relates directly to the study objective. These hypotheses states that cigarette smoking leads to a decline in an individual’s academic performance while the other, which seeks to establish the relationship between smoking and stress states that cigarette smoking increases with an increased level of stress (Marianne, 2004) Method Participants The participants who took place in this research as respondents were 21 college students between the ages of 21-25. This research exercise comprised of various demographic characteristics. These demographic characteristics of the research sample possessed three different variables and these variables were race, age and gender. The first variable, which is gender, depicted a 48% male and 52% female respondents. On the aspect of age as a continuous variable, the respondents had a mean, M=22.6 and standard deviation, SD=1.273. With respect to the variable of race, the sample comprised of 29% Caucasians, 24% African Americans while the Asian population comprised of 48% of the total respondents. Procedure After acquiring the representative sample of 21 college students, a systematic procedure was followed in the data collection period. The students were recruited via a facebook group page which was formed after the sample was obtained. The students were informed of the processes of filling out a questionnaire form in a honest manner. During the recruitment, the participants were also informed of the time and venue of the data collection exercise. Having undergone a successful recruitment exercise, they were presented with questionnaires and writing tools to fill them. The data collection period took approximately an hour. The questionnaires were then organized and filed later analysis (Revell, Warburton & Wesnes, 1984). Measures The questionnaires comprised of questions drawn from within the boundaries of the research hypotheses. To measure the responses of the students, a Likert scale was incorporated into the questionnaires. This Likret scale was extended to gather for five choices. The scales used ranged from, 1{Strongly Agree} 2{Agree} 3{Neutral} 4{Disagree} 5{Strongly Disagree}. This extended scale was meant to gather for the different opinion levels of the qualitative responses provided by the students. Upon the scorings of the Likert scale, the statistical means of the different responses would be calculated to gauge the inclination of the students towards each question contained in the paper. For example, the mean of the question on cigarette smoking and stress had a mean of 3.38. This shows a strong inclination of the students’ response towards agreeing with the question (Nichter, Mimi & Carkoglu, 2007). Internal Consistency Reliability An aspect of internal consistency reliability was carried out to determine the reliability of the Likert scale used. To determine the reliability of the 5-scale Likert used, an analysis to produce the Cronbach’s Alpha score was performed. The rules guiding the Cronbach’s scale is 0.9>Excellent, 0.8>Good, 0.7>Accepted, 0.6> Doubted, 0.5> Poor, Read More