Explain the instructions, and what they are looking for. Provide the examples below. Explain any concepts that are being used in this example.
The purpose of this assignment is to try to make the basic concepts of the experimental method intuitive by designing an experiment concerned with a common phenomenon. I want you to think about the concepts related to the psychological phenomenon reluctance to participate in class discussions:
List at least 5 concepts related to attitudes toward on-line college courses. Just include any thoughts; they don't need to be in sentence form.
Next I want you to write 10 items that you believe can measure someone's attitude toward online college courses. Try to integrate the concepts that you listed above into your questions.
A hint: I have already decided that the Likert scale will look like this...
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Strongly
Disagree
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Neither
Agree nor
Disagree
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Strongly
Agree
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-3
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-2
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-1
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0
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1
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2
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3
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Write some of your items such that "Strongly Agree" corresponds to a positive attitude, and write other items such that "Strongly Agree" indicates a negative attitude.
Advice: avoid too many extreme items. Just like other characteristics, we would expect variability in any given attitude. Extremes in either direction would be less likely than moderate attitudes.
There is little variability associated with extreme attitudes. If all their statements represent extreme pro and anti- stances they are going to find that most people reject those items and they can't differentiate among the people in their sample.
Remember: your attitude scale should differentiate among individuals who have strong or weak attitudes toward the object of interest.