Research Instruments and Research Hypotheses

This course concentrates on the design and development of different research instruments. In this vein, the focus will be placed on the development of an instrument design strategy, scales of measurement and the components of the research report. The course begins by looking at the questionnaire development process with a focus on questionnaire design, question type and wording, pretesting and revising. We will consider the identification of scales of measurement and operationalisation, and the design of an online questionnaire. We are going to discuss sources of measurement differences, and the assessment of the reliability of measurements. The issue of the validity of measurements and the various types of validity will also be explored, as well as attitude measurement. We will discuss data preparation and processing, data coding, adjustment, and data analysis using multivariate data approaches. We are also going to explore frequency distribution and measures of location, variability and shape. The course ends with a discussion on hypothesis testing and the use of statistics relevant to cross-tabulations. We will discuss parametric and non-parametric tests in hypothesis testing and group comparison as well as the different sections of the research report.