Why should you develop your own measure? Give the two factors you consider most important when creating your measure.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: First, if you can find a reliable and valid measure for your construct, you should use it. It is just not feasible for an undergraduate to create a measure and test it for all of the appropriate psychometric properties in one or two semesters. However, sometimes you cannot find a measure for exactly what you want to test. There are also the problems of cost for some established measures and the fact that an undergraduate might not have the qualifications to administer it. So, you need to create your own measure. Then, when developing a new measure, there are a number of factors to consider. First, you need to consider whether to use open-ended or closed question approaches. If there is the possibility of answers that you do not know about, you should use an open-ended approach. On the other hand, if you want to restrict the possibilities to a selected few, you should use a closed approach. Second, you should consider which questions and answers are crucial to measure your construct. Ideally, you want the best match between your construct and your measure. If you are trying to measure all of intelligence, for example, you are going to need a lot of subcategories and a lot of items. However, if you just want to measure the type of emotional intelligence that involves understanding recognizing your own emotions, writing a brief, quality measure is more doable. In conclusion, while there are many other things to consider, structure of the items, how many items, and social sensitivity, for example, these two will get you started and are critical in creating an adequate measure.