Measuring Attitudes Towards Exercise Among Secondary School Students - Essay Example

Measuring Attitudes towards Exercise among Secondary School Word Count 578 IntroductionResearch methodology and sociological research often involves the creation and administration of surveys (Jones & Appelbaum, 1989). There are several methods and means which have been developed by scientists over time to provide accurate, useful and user-friendly systems for making these surveys but the two most commonly used systems are Thurstone’s equal interval method and Likert’s method of summated ratings. Since our survey is supposed to measure attitudes towards exercise among secondary school students, Likert’s method would be more useful for us that Thurstone’s. This is because Thurstone’s method is more applicable in cases where the issue is complex and the people taking the survey have a good understanding of the issue to begin with. Likert’s method is easier since it helps in creating surveys where the participants can give useful input even if they do not have a deep understanding of the issues involved. The methods has been successfully used in several secondary school surveys in the U.K as well as in the international arena for many years and has established its credibility as a useful method (Francis & McCarron, 1989) therefore I would prefer to use this method for our school related survey as well. Likert’s Method Likert’s method was developed by Rensis Likert, who invented it in 1932 to aid in psychometric measurements (Wikipedia, 2006). The modern process begins with the definition of the focus which in our case would be secondary school students’ attitudes towards exercise. This is a one dimensional scale therefore the operational definition for the initial list of statements would come be to create statements that describe attitudes which students might be expected to have. A good theory or comprehensive information about the situation is always good to have before starting on any stage of the process (Alphen et al. 1994) but once those are gathered we can safely go towards creating the survey. Stage One This initial list has to be created by those who are intimately familiar with the current situation and what the survey intends to accomplish. Any technical information or lesser known concepts should be clarified to those who may not know them. Input for the initial list can be gathered from any reliable source or consultants who have good knowledge about the situation as well as the participants who will eventually take the survey (Trochim, 2005). Of course the list of initial items can be produced by only one person, but to give the survey more validity and to improve the reliability by having a large number of possible items, it is better to involve as many people as possible. As for the items themselves, they should be such that a person is able to agree/disagree with them on a certain scale. Normally, the values on the scale are 1-5 or 1-7 which gives a person a chance to adopt a neutral stance on certain points. Depending on how the statements are worded, 1 can be ‘strongly agree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ but the location of the scale is not as important as the actual questions presented in the survey. For example, in our case we might have initial statements like: 1. Physical exercise would be more useful if students were allowed to do exercise in any way they want. 2. Physical exercise is only important for students who wish to be on any of the school teams. 3. Nutrition is important for health while physical exercise is not. 4. Education is not helped by physical exercise. 5. Physical exercise is nothing more than a punishment. Stage Two It is difficult to assume that a secondary school student would have the time or patience to respond to all the statements in the initial set made in the first round, therefore a selection of the most relevant statements is necessary. Selectors can be used for this purpose who should rate each item on the initial list as being useful for the focus of the survey or not. Once the selectors have given their ratings for the items, we would have to select those which are judged as being better than the others for our survey (Trochim, 2005). We would have to discard any items on the list which have a low correlation with the total score across the list. If the remaining list is still sufficiently large, it could be useful to take the selection process a step further and get the average rating given by the top 25% of the judges (upper quartile) and the bottom 25% (lower quartile). A t-test of the difference between the upper and lower quartile will show the average value for the statement. If the t-value is high, there is a great difference between the ranking given by the highest and lowest selectors therefore the item should be kept on the final list. If the difference is negligible, the item should be taken out. The Attitude Test In actual cases, very few of the items on the initial list make it to the final list since many of the statements could be looking at the same aspect of attitude. Moreover, it is easier and better to get students to answer 10 significantly important questions for judging their attitude rather than 100 questions which have a lot of overlap or are given answers without any thought (Trochim, 2005). Once this set of statements is ready, it can be given to students to seek their responses. The application of Likert’s scale comes with a very important decision, i.e. do we give the students a chance to take a neutral position or not. If we have a scale with numbers 1-5 it gives the student a neutral/undecided position to select as in: 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neither agree nor disagree/undecided (Neutral point) 4. agree 5. strongly agree However, if we remove position 3, we can force a student to take a position on the statement which gives us the position they would lean towards. That is to say that if they were forced to pick one side or the other they would go for agreeing or disagreeing with the given statement. It is one of the strengths of this method that a forced decision can be taken along with a leaning attitude by using a scale with even numbered options. For example: 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Somewhat disagree 4. Somewhat Agree 5. Agree 6. Strongly agree In this case a position is being forced upon, and options 3-4 will let us know which side the student is leaning towards. The Score The overall score a student would get on the attitude survey would be a sum of all their ratings given to the statements. This is why the full name of the method is Likert’s method of summated ratings (Trochim, 2005). The average score for a sufficiently large number of students across various demographics can then give us an insight into the views which can be applied across the nation as a sample. Before such a process is initiated, we must be sure about the ethics of the questionnaire and the potential pitfalls. Strengths and Weaknesses The main strength of Likert’s method is its simplicity and reliability in producing results which are accurate and useful. Once the statements have been finalized, the test can be taken by students and administered by teachers who need to have no prior knowledge about the system or behind the scenes workings of the survey. Since test takers can be forced to take a position on a statement, it can also work to provide answers for situations where a decision must be made one way or another. At the same time, the test has been criticized of being too simplistic in nature and not applicable to situations where there is a possibility of having more than one dimension of attitude (Alphen et al. 1994). Despite this, I believe that the survey would benefit the health campaign tremendously since we would be able to tell the attitude the students have towards exercise in general and the various statements in the survey in particular. The attitude of a person towards a particular statement helps in judging their expected behaviour to a great extent (Perry, 1976). Therefore, knowing this attitude will allow us to gear the campaign in a manner more suited towards changing the attitude of the students (if required) or educating them by removing any negative thoughts they have towards exercise. Knowing the attitude is akin to a marketing study which is conducted by a business for advertisement purposes and if we have a campaign for the students without knowing what they think then at best we would be preaching to the converted and at worse, we would be alienating them. Works Cited Alphen, A. et. al. 1994. ‘Likert or Rasch? Nothing is more applicable than good theory’ Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 20 no 1, pp196-201. Francis, L., and McCarron, M. 1989. ‘Measurement of Attitudes Toward Christianity Among Nigerian Secondary School Students’, Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 129 no. 4, pp569-572. Jones L., and Appelbaum, M. 1989. ‘Psychometric Methods’, Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 40, no.1, pp23-44. Perry, R. 1976. ‘Attitude scales as behaviour estimation devices’, Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 100, no. 1, pp137-143. Trochim, W. 2005, ‘Likert Scaling’, Research Methods Knowledge Base, [Online] Avilable at: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/scallik.htm Wikipedia, 2006, ‘Likert scale’, Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert Read More