SOCPSY 1Z03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Likert Scale, Role Theory, Social Desirability Bias

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Social Psychology
• Course: SOCPSY 1Z03
• Professor: Paul Glavin

Document Summary

Procedure for collecting info by asking members of some population a set of questions and recording their responses: asking people to report their attitudes on various subject. Can numerically code these responses to find out the relationship between these things. Provides self-reported data that can be coded numerically into variables. Survey researchers then examine how these variables are associated. Cannot change to see what happens in response. Surveys can be used for descriptive, explanatory, or exploratory studies. Most often, people are the unit of analysis. When the unit is not the individual, it is still the individual who is contacted - the person is called a respondent: respondent: a person who provides data for analysis by responding to a survey questionnaire. Surveys are excellent tools for measuring the attitudes and orientations for a large population. Can be used to describe what is happening. Used to get an idea of what the broader class (population) is saying.