My research problem is looking at the self-esteem of students diagnosed with a learning disabilities who participate in athletics versus their non-disabled peers. Three ways to measure self-esteem to answer this research problem would be use of interview, questionnaire, and survey. Each measure would be looking directly at self esteem and the questions posed within each would reflect that concept. For instance, an interviewer might ask "How does playing sports and competing make you feel?" The questionnaire may feature simple yes no questions as well as open-ended questions for students to write out what they're feeling. The survey would be something akin to the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale which is designed much like a Likert scale running the gamut from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
The validity and reliability of this information may very well be questionable at the end of the day. I brought up the Rosenberg scale because it was listed as the most reliable and widely-used measure for self-esteem. But, if the students don't understand how to respond to the questions the final results may be worthless.A learning disabled student or a typically developed student may not fully understand the concepts discussed within each measure so choosing the right population is important -- but this could also jeopardize the validity of the overall work if the populations are too similar.
A few thoughts:
ReplyDelete- The survey and the questionnaire might be combined into one instrument. It could have parts that are taken from established scales and then other parts that you adapt to the needs of your study.
- You are right to question the validity of the Rosenberg scale, especially if it has vocabulary that would make it difficult for a LD student to read.
- Because you are worried about the reliability of the data collected right from the students, you might want to think about expanding your measures to include collecting data from teachers or parents. This would help validate what ever student measures you did have.