Faculty Director, Nora Cate Schaeffer, to teach “Measurement and Questionnaires for Survey Research (Sociology 752)” Fall Semester 2010

Faculty Director, Nora Cate Schaeffer, is offering “Measurement and Questionnaire for Survey Reseach” this semester (Fall 2010) on Wednesdays from 7:45-10:45AM. This course provides an introduction to the conceptual issues raised by conducting measurement using self-reports in surveys, an overview of the literature that addresses theoretical and practical problems in questionnaire design, and practice in developing, reviewing, and writing standardized questions and questionnaires. Particular attention is paid to recent work that draws on cognitive psychology to inform designing standardized instruments. The course is structured around the stages of instrument development: developmental interviewing, question writing, question testing, pretesting, and questionnaire formatting. Issues involved in telephone interviews and computer-assisted interviews will be considered at several points, but the assignments use face-to-face interviews with paper instruments. The material covered in this course is relevant for standardized measurement in many social research contexts in addition to surveys, such as laboratory experiments.

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