I need somebody who tends to find surveys difficult

Post Reply New Topic

Okay, I'm looking for one person who can help me critique my latest version of my autism questionnaire, The Autism Scale for Expressive Adults (TASEA). It needs to be someone who tends to find surveys and questionnaires especially difficult to answer and someone who hasn't already done an earlier version of my questionnaire.

I just need one person who is willing to meet with me online (some sort of IM or IRC), someone who doesn't mind sharing their email address so I can send a Word attachment of the current TASEA, and who is good at knowing WHY such surveys or questionnaires are difficult for you (that you can pinpoint the reason, question by question).

I'll have you read over and fill out the questionnaire, and then if you'll be so kind as to go question by question and comment on what works (as opposed to other questionnaires you've disliked) and what hasn't. I won't be scoring your answers but I do want you to take it as it's intended so as to pick up on any problems.

So, anybody willing and able?

Hi, willing and able here. Most questionnaires, and especially the ones i have encountered for ASD diagnosis, are torturous to me because of the way most of them are put or scored. I would love to help with any improvement. My only warning is that i can tend to be overly specific and fu-u-uuuusy! But i offer what i have.

I'll help. I almost always disapprove of the questions I see in surveys, for a variety of reasons. PM me if you need my e-mail address.

I am so glad you asked, Sophist!!

I tried to do your last survey, but there was no room for gray area, and I had it sent back to me with (stern) instructions to only chose one answer for each.
I love irony, don't get me wrong, and I had a lovely laugh at the idea someone on the AS spectrum was limited to only one way of expressing the answer. But no, I never corrected it and returned it, as I had spent considerable time on it and resented it being dumped back at me because I did not conform to the exercise.

So, yes, I would be able to help you on this one. Thank you for asking.

Merle

Hey, Merle. Unfortunately, for this specific part of the critique, I'm looking for people who have never seen any version of this questionnaire before (get a fresh perspective to simulate someone taking it for the first time).

However, one can never have too many critiques. If you'd like to be one of my other critiques from people who've taken an earlier version and then go over this version, that'd be great. If you are interested, would you PM me your email (I can't remember where you are in my email address book, heh) and I'll send it to you. It'll probably be a few days. I still have a few more alterations I have to make before I am ready with a presentable version.

Ah too bad I already did it. Did my detailed explanations give the game away?

one of the things i tried to address with ASC is test like the AQ used conditions like
Definitely agree,Slightly agree,Slightly disagree,Definitely disagree.

How do you quantify slightly. I mean if you slightly agee is that 60% diagreeing and 40% agreeing or what? If you use partially/partly it is even more ambiguous.

I tried to use terms like

Entirely correct, More correct than not, In between, More incorrect than not, and Entirely incorrect

That is pretty much equivalent to 100%, 51-99%, 50%, 1-49%, 0%

Though some people still had trouble

Trying to remember what version you took... The current version usually has a 9-point scale on most questions. The number of questions has also increased and there's been a lot of rewording and rephrasing to make things clearer.

I'd ask more people who've taken it previously to fully critique it but unfortunately that tends to take a lot more time since I then have to have time to review the critique, come up with corrections, make notes, and then we set up a time to meet and discuss in detail, which can sometimes take up to an hour and a half. And I need to get this ready to apply for IRB in June to be ready to start collecting data come fall.

In the paper I'll be writing on it and hopefully submitting for publication along with the results of the pilot, I will be acknowledging everyone here who helped with this (although not individually by name), but you'll know who you are.

I actually thought the AQ was among the best-written surveys I've taken. Not perfect, but pretty good.

It is not a win-win situation. On a scale of 1 to 10 how much are you hurting? errr?

I think ASD people particularly find it difficult to answer question like that, unless you tell them the method they are to quantify it.

Yep but sluighty agree means you could disagree more and therefore those middle options should be swapped around. 'slighly' means very little in that context.

Very true, experience is always relative. On many of the questions, particularly ones where people were asking me to define the terms better, I have tried to do to leave less room for personal interpretation. However, even though experience is always relative, of the 50-some-odd people who took the survey, there was a consistency in the scoring range with the vast majority of people scoring in the 50-80 range (on a scale of 0-100), with a few outliers in the 40-50 and 80-90 ranges. So even though it's a subjective measure, in the earlier version there does seem to be some consistency of response.

Hopefully, with the continued editing I've done with some of the test-takers giving me detailed feedback and offering suggestions as to how to improve wording and content, this version is the strongest and most predictable yet.

So now the final test before I submit to IRB will be to run it across a few people who've never seen the questionnaire before and who are known to have especial difficulties with such questionnaires, so I can see still where its weaknesses are and if they are somehow correctable.

I'm not expert in question deign but possibly the solution lies in the questions rather than possible answers.

The simplest is yes/no. Of course it doesn't work unless you ask a yes/no aquestion.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 26 May 2008, 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

btw i don't know how you score. In fact I have no idea what is behind the question, as I haven't seen any results. Do you polarize answers like the AQ test does?

Most are; however, there are some in which both poles are scored higher and the middle range is lowest. And then some which are multiple choice response, and then the scoring varies.

At some point in future, I would like to make up the same questionnaire but with a more simplified scoring system because I have had a few people say that they would actually prefer LESS choice when answering because too much choice was too confusing. So like was mentioned earlier, there'll be a five-point scale rather than a nine for those people who find the 9 too difficult. That version will come at a later date and I'll also need to do an analysis for comparison of the two versions to see how they match up with one another.



Yes, I agree. Which is why I haven't altered the scoring system but have tried to update the questions themselves, especially to eliminate any vagueness.

I'm completely the opposite. Not only are surveys excruciatingly easy, I start 'gaming' them, seeing how each question leads to the overall answer, and what someone would want in terms of 'looking good' vs. 'being honest'... It's how I managed to graduate in the first place..