Learning and Evaluation/Archive/Learning modules/3Operationalize

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Part 1: Introduction Welcome! Why Survey? Why Surveys Are Useful Constructs Operationalize Survey instruments Types of information Attributes - a special case Survey Objective and Planning Part 2: Reliability & Validity Reliability & Validity Reliability Validity Face Validity Content Validity Criterion Validity Construct Validity Part 3: Question Construction Writing Good Questions Questions from Existing Surveys Constructing your own Questions Be Specific Be Concise Avoid Double Negatives Minimize Social Desirability Bias Avoid Double-barreled questions Avoid abbreviations, jargon, technical terms, or slang Avoid leading questions Avoid loaded questions Use appropriate wording Ask useful questions Rely on second-hand data sparsely Use caution when asking personal questions Part 4: Response Options Question types Fill-in-the-blank Dichotomous pairs Multiple choice Check all that apply Ranking Scales Choosing response options Part 5: Questionnaire structure Important considerations Questions order Additional Resources Feedback

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Operationalize

Construct

Operationalize

Survey Instrument

Before writing the survey instrument, one needs to operationalize the construct—or make the construct measurable. Constructs are often operationalized with a proxy measure or a data indicator that tells us something about the construct. These are typically someone's perception of the phenomenon or measures of a related phenomenon.

Surveys are proxy measures because they do not measure a phenomenon directly; instead, they obtain information about the phenomena through the perceptions of the survey respondents. These perceptions could be either observations of others or observations of oneself, which is also known as a self-report.

The proxy measures that result from an operationalized construct allows the development of survey objectives, like in the example below.

Example

The construct A person's interest in editing Wikipedia can be operationalized with the proxy measures of "behavior" and "attitude" around editing Wikipedia. The following survey question objectives can be developed with these in mind:

To understand a person's interest to edit Wikipedia via

(1) their recent behavior in editing

(2) their attitudes towards editing