Description

 In this exercise you will need to collect some data for analysis of the instrument.

With the growth of positive psychology there has been a renewed interest in the psychology of everyday life and the question of individuals levels of satisfaction with everyday life. There is a notion that increased workloads are contributing to diminshed quality of life. While there are many instruments that have been developed to measure general life satisfaction and quality of life it is useful to have one which reflects the local context. The Feelings scale is a general quality of life survey that was designed by 4th year students as part of their course work as a measure of general life satisfaction. Your task is to test the instruments content validity, construct validity, criterion validity and reliability. To do this you will need to conduct a brief literature review to identify the content domains which should be covered in the instrument. The designers of the instrument originally included indicators relating to 4 domains, satisfaction with home life, satisfaction with life outside the home, affect, and physical symptoms. Contruct validity would be demonstrated by a 4 factor structure showing items grouping into these categories. This requires the conduct of a factor analysis and a reliability analysis which should be reported as part of the materials section of a research report. The research report should conform to APA standards.

Criterion validity would be established by demonstrating that demographic factors which have been shown to be associated with quality of life. This requires the conduct of a multiple regression using Age, sex, education level and socio-economic status as predictors of quality of life (both overall and on individual subscales). This should be reported in the results section of the paper.

Your task is to write a brief research report evaluating the criterion validity of the Feelings scale. The report should include; an abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and reference section. Total length is about 3000 words. The Method section could contain a summary of an exploratory factor analysis as evidence of the instruments construct validity.

It is assumed that the new instrument is a parallel form of existing instruments which measure general satisfaction with life, and since demographic factors such as age, gender, and socio-economic status have been found to be associated with satisfaction with life it is predicted that there will be an overall association between satisfaction with life and these demographic factors. Its up to you as individual researchers to specify the direction of these effects.

A significant association between the feelings scale score and demographic factors would be evidence supporting the criterion validity of the scale. 

In this assignment, students are required to demonstrate

1.       Demonstrate knowledge of the theoretical and empirical bases underpinning the construction and interpretation of psychometric assessments.

2.       Understand, apply and evaluate basic research methods in psychology, including research design, data analysis and interpretation, and the appropriate use of technologies.

3.       Apply knowledge of the scientific method in thinking about problems related to behaviour and mental processes.

4.       Use information in an ethical manner.

5.       Write a standard research report using APA structure and formatting conventions.

6.       Demonstrate a capacity for independent learning.