Course:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/3.3.1 Method - Procedure - Question Development

Development of Questions

Questions for the structured self-report questionnaire were created by undergraduate students from the Psych 305A/2013ST2 (Summer Semester) class. They were later compiled and organized by Dr. Jaimie Veale.

Dr. Jaimie Veale presented the class with the following assignment. Instructions were given via class handout to design a pilot questionnaire based on Lippa’s approach to Gender Diagnosticity (Lippa, 1990) in order to measure single gender-related personality traits. Though not required for marks, the instructor suggested that each student look over the questionnaire and add/edit as necessary, giving free reign for respectful editing and creative interaction. The development of the questions and editing of the questionnaire was done through wiki software.

The questions were developed by the individuals in the class on the premise that the questions would reflect some gender differences as perceived subjectively by the authors. Students received two articles in class to help them formulate questions for the questionnaire (Lippa & Connelly, 1990; Smiler & Epstein, 2010). Both articles discussed how occupational preferences and participation in hobbies have been to shown to be meaningful indicators of gender-related individual differences. Thus students were asked to create questions that discriminate “male-like” and “female-like” occupations, hobbies and activities.

In effect, the survey is a compilation of individual contributions for the purpose of participating in a collaborative class research project. The survey was created with negligible interaction between creators; ‘negligible’ refers to less than ten questions and discussion interactions on an online discussion forum created by the class instructor Jaimie Veale. It is possible that undocumented student interactions related to the creation of the questions may have occurred outside of this forum. The process was more of addition to the questionnaire than it was editing or interpersonal communication. The authors agree that these differences are not necessarily universal or predictive of individual life-outcomes, but are an attempt to “differentiate men and women in a particular population in a particular culture during a particular historical era” (Lippa et al, 1990, p. 1053)