Discussion About Possible Survey Research Topic and Hypothesis
Discuss one possible survey research topic, related to the field of Psychology, that you would like to investigate this semester. Assume you will be using the survey research method and ultimately analyzing your data with regression analysis or a correlation. What are you hoping to learn from this survey. What specific research question would you like to answer about this topic. Your survey should explore a particular relationship between two variables which you could later test using regression analysis or a correlation. What specific hypothesis would you be testing in this study. What will be your predictor variable (often called an independent variable if experimentally manipulated but called a predictor variable when measured in naturally occurring situations when all extraneous variables are not controlled for) and what will be your criterion variable (often called the dependent variable if experimentally measured but named a criterion variable when assessed in correlational studies). How do you predict your results will turn out. Your ultimate survey would include several items to form a scale assessing your predictor variable and several other survey items forming a scale to measure your criterion variable. Include three possible survey items and the type of scale you would use to assess them.
For example, in a survey where you look at the relationship between social media usage and marital satisfaction, social media usage would be the predictor variable and marital satisfaction would be the measured or criterion variable. How does the level of social media use influence marital satisfaction. How might these two variables be operationalized? You would need to specifically define what constituted social media usage and how level of marital satisfaction would be measured. You might predict that a high level of social media use (as defined by the total weekly hours spent on facebook, twitter, Instagram, linkedIn and Youtube) would result in lower levels of reported marital satisfaction as assessed on a ten-item measure of marital satisfaction.
