Instructional manipulation check: Difference between revisions

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[[File:BlueDotTask.pdf|thumb|Blue-dot task, a check designed to detect participants who fail to read the instructions. After Oppenheimer ''et al.''<ref name=oppenheimer/>]]

An '''instructional manipulation check''', often abbreviated '''IMC''', is a special kind of question inserted in a [[questionnaire]] among the regular questions, designed to check whether respondents are paying attention to the instructions.<ref>{{cite book |title=Principles of Research in Behavioral Science:'' (Third Edition)'' |author=Bernard E. Whitley, Jr. |author2=Mary E. Kite |publisher=Routledge |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-136-19658-4 |pages=248–249}}</ref> Discarding responses by participants who fail to read the instructions reduces the noise-to-signal ratio and can thereby increase the [[statistical power]] of an experiment. The tool was developed by Oppenheimer ''et al.''<ref name=oppenheimer>{{cite journal |author=Daniel M. Oppenheimer |author2=Tom Meyvis |author3=Nicolas Davidenko |title=Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power |journal=[[Journal of Experimental Social Psychology]] |volume=45 |issue=4 |date=July 2009 |pages=867–872 |doi=10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.009}}</ref>

Eliminating random responses this way before performing [[statistical hypothesis testing]] may be considered a legitimate form of [[data manipulation]], but should be duly mentioned in publications reporting on the outcome of the experiment in question.<ref name=myth>{{cite journal |author=Wolfgang Stroebe |author2=Tom Postmes |author3=Russell Spears |title=Scientific Misconduct and the Myth of Self-correction in Science |journal=[[Perspectives on Psychological Science]] |date=2012 |volume=7 |issue=6 <!--|pages=670–688--> |at=Note 2 |doi=10.1177/1745691612460687}}</ref>

==Blue-dot task==

Among several forms an IMC can take, a popular one is the so-called '''blue-dot task''',<ref name=myth/> suitable for [[Computer-assisted web interviewing|on-line questonnaire]]s. A number of larger blue circles are arranged according to a [[Likert scale]] from (say) "very rarely" to "very frequently". Participants who ignore the instructions and merely want to finish the task will just click any one of these circles. The instructions, however, ask the participants to ignore the larger circles and instead click a little blue dot at the bottom of the screen. Oppenheimer ''et al.'' report that in a large sample of [[undergraduate]] participants, approximately 7% failed this task.<ref name=oppenheimer/>

==References==