Odum Institute: Multi-Item Scale Development: Part 1

Part 1 of this course will be offered over two afternoons (10/17/23 and 10/19/23 from 1pm – 5pm US Eastern) via Zoom only. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

This course is the first in a two-part scale development series that introduces students to the systematic process of developing multi-item scale measures and survey instruments. Examples include measures of various social and psychological variables that might be assessed in health, medicine, journalism, or other related research areas. After a brief theoretical introduction to topics such as defining a construct and types of validity, we will turn to applied issues such as what is the optimal scale development process and how (and when) can you deviate from that process. We will also address practical issues around questionnaire design such as how to construct a “good” survey instrument that has a natural flow, minimizes participant burden, has appropriate response options and other common concerns in scale development and design. We will focus on real-life examples to demonstrate the scale development process.

Although we will briefly discuss the kinds of quantitative techniques that are commonly used in the scale development process, this course will not cover the application of these methods. Quantitative methods for scale development will be covered in Part 2 of this series.

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