College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item A COMPARISON OF EX-ANTE, LABORATORY, AND FIELD METHODS FOR EVALUATING SURVEY QUESTIONS(2014) Maitland, Aaron; Presser, Stanley; Survey Methodology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A diverse range of evaluation methods is available for detecting measurement error in survey questions. Ex-ante question evaluation methods are relatively inexpensive, because they do not require data collection from survey respondents. Other methods require data collection from respondents either in the laboratory or in the field setting. Research has explored how effective some of these methods are at identifying problems with respect to one another. However, a weakness of most of these studies is that they do not compare the range of question evaluation methods that are currently available to researchers. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how the methods researchers use to evaluate survey questions influence the conclusions they draw about the questions. In addition, the dissertation seeks to identify more effective ways to use the methods together. It consists of three studies. The first study examines the extent of agreement between ex-ante and laboratory methods in identifying problems and compares the methods in how well they predict differences between questions whose validity has been estimated in record-check studies. The second study evaluates the extent to which ex-ante and laboratory methods predict the performance of questions in the field as measured by indirect assessments of data quality such as behavior coding, response latency and item nonresponse. The third study evaluates the extent to which ex-ante, laboratory, and field methods predict the reliability of answers to survey questions as measured by stability over time. The findings suggest (1) that a multiple method approach to question evaluation is the best strategy given differences in the ability to detect different types of problems between the methods and (2) how to combine methods more effectively in the future.Item Measuring Wishful Thinking: The Development and Validation of a New Scale(2007-06-05) Eichelberger, Angela H; Sigall, Harold; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation describes the development and validation of a 10-item scale measuring individual differences in wishful thinking, or the degree to which individuals' desires bias their judgments. A study was conducted to investigate the new scale's psychometric properties, as well as its relationships with other self-report measures. The wishful thinking measure demonstrated convergent validity with other measures of bias, including self-deceptive enhancement, belief in a just world, and social desirability. Wishful thinking showed discriminant validity with several dimensions of problem-focused coping. Wishful thinking was related to optimism and greater use of positive reinterpretation and growth, an emotion-focused coping response. Next, the new measure was used to distinguish optimists who were wishful thinkers from those who were realistic. An experimental study was conducted to investigate hypothesized differences between wishful thinkers and realistic optimists. In this study, participants were asked to make judgments about their future performance. When success at the task was important to wishful thinkers, they judged success as more likely than when success was not important to them. Realistic optimists did not vary their judgments as a function of importance. The optimal margin of illusion hypothesis was not supported; extreme levels of optimism and wishful thinking were not associated with overconfidence and poor performance. Potential uses of the wishful thinking measure for future research are discussed.