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Suppose you are designing a survey with ten questions on exercise habits and ten questions on general physical health. How would you apply the two standard mitigation techniques for item-order effects to this survey's design to prevent sequence bias?
Question: Suppose you are designing a survey with ten questions on exercise habits and ten questions on general physical health. How would you apply the two standard mitigation techniques for item-order effects to this survey's design to prevent sequence bias?
Sample answer: To mitigate item-order effects, I would apply randomization by using online survey software to randomly shuffle the presentation order of the questions for each participant. Alternatively, I would apply counterbalancing by creating different versions of the survey with different fixed sequences (e.g., half starting with exercise habits and half with physical health) and distributing them equally to participants.
Key points:
- Application of randomization to shuffle the sequence of questions for each respondent.
- Application of counterbalancing by creating and distributing different sequence versions of the survey.
- Demonstration of how these techniques prevent systematic sequence bias.
Rubric: To receive full credit, the response should apply both randomization (shuffling question order randomly for participants) and counterbalancing (presenting different ordered versions of the survey to different groups of participants) specifically to the context of the exercise and health survey to prevent order bias.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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