How would you locate an established measure? Give three ways of doing so, and discuss one advantage and disadvantage of each.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: There are a number of ways to find an established measure. First, you should look at the articles you located when doing a literature search for your topic. In each of those articles, the authors would have described their questionnaires in the Materials section of their papers. The authors would also give the citations for each of those questionnaires. The great thing about this method is that the reader knows the questionnaire has been used to measure the relevant construct before and has reasonably worked. The negative thing about this method is that sometimes the questionnaire cannot be located easily—the authors might have written it themselves and never published it for general use. Second, you can use PsycTESTS or some other online database like HaPI. These are great because you just need to do an online search and a number of measures will be located if they are out there. The advantage is the ease of locating the measure. The disadvantage is that the most effective measure out there might not appear at top and you are fooled into using the wrong measure because it was quick and easy to find. Finally, a third way of locating a measure is by consulting one of the reference books out there that lists questionnaires. The advantage is that the books give a lot of detail about the measures; the disadvantage is that the reader has to do a bit of old-fashioned work. In conclusion, start with the literature and go from there.