The construct we are measuring is 'trust', and the scale is measuring trust in politicians.
Research Report
You are expected to describe the theory behind the measure, perform an exploratory factor analysis on the items assessing self-interest, benevolence, competence, and integrity, describe the steps taken to select the final items, and evaluate the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, validity) of your final scale.
The following sections should be included in the report:
1) Title Page (in APA style)
2) Introduction (Background, rationale and framework for the measure):
This section should:
- Provide a literature review of the construct.
o Identify the construct to be measured.
This is your opportunity to define the construct differently to the way in which your group defined it. If you choose to use the same definition as your group, do not plagiarise the first assignment by copying and pasting the definition. Write it in your own words, and extend on it wherever required.
o Justify why it is useful or worthwhile to create this measure.
o Identify measurement issues associated with the construct and/or existing measures.
- Include a statement about the expected factor structure of the new scale and/or form a factorial validity hypothesis
- Present at least one convergent and at least one discriminant validity hypothesis for the new scale
o For the ease of collecting data, you will be provided with a range of measures which can be used for convergent/discriminant validity. You will need to select at least two of these measures and justify your selection of each. Note that you can use facet subscales of the validation measures for your hypotheses.
- Present two additional hypotheses of your choosing about the new scale or its subscales in relation to validity. Again, you can use facet subscales of the validation measures for your hypotheses.
3) Method
- Describe the sample and measures used in your validation strategy. Do not include scales that you did not use.
- You can include the following statement under the Procedure sub-section of the Method: "An online survey was completed by undergraduate students at an Australian university"
4) Results:
This section should describe:
- The results from the factor analysis (or analyses if you performed more than one), including a justification for the extraction and rotation method used, factor analysis statistics, and a description of the scale and inter-factor correlations. If items were removed, also describe the process through which the decision was made to exclude these items.
- A reliability analysis of the (revised) measure, including Cronbach's alpha and related item statistics (e.g., alpha if item deleted) for the composite scale and each of the subscales.
- Descriptive statistics for all measures used.
- Correlations, t-tests, etc. as appropriate that address your validation hypotheses.
5) Discussion:
This section should be similar to the Discussion section of a lab report. That is, it should present an evaluation of your (revised) measure, including:
- Statements about the factor structure, items included/deleted, and implications for the definition and measurement of the construct being investigated.
- A discussion of the reliability of the final scales.
- A discussion of the evidence for the validity of the scales.
- A discussion of any revisions to the scale and recommendations for how it should be validated in the future.
6) References:
- In-text referencing and the reference list should be in APA 6th ed. format.
Measures in the dataset
In SPSS (Variable View) the demographics are presented first, followed by individual items from the new scale to measure political trust and each of the validating measures, and overall scores for the validating measures are presented at the end.
The overall scores that have been created in the data are averages. For example, if there were 10 items, they were all added together and then divided by 10. i.e., ((item1 + item 2.....item10)/10)
You will need to create the overall score and/or factor scores for the new political measure, and this/these will be based on the final result you get for your factor analysis.
Attachment:- Trust in Politicians Scale and Project-Measures.rar