Assignment:
A planner wants to assess road quality. He sends a questionnaire to a sample of residents and asks them to evaluate road surfaces, repair quality, and amount of traffic. He finds the results of limited value, so he assigns engineers to travel through the neighborhoods to rate the roads. The engineers are given general instructions but no written rating forms. Still dissatisfied, he develops a rating form that lists the number of potholes per mile, the depth of potholes, the thickness of asphalt, the width of the roadway and similar measures.
(a) Comment on the reliability and operational validity of each approach.
(b) Which approach would you consider the most operationally valid? Comment on the ways each approach could be modified to improve its reliability and validity.