Questionnaire Design

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carlajosef

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Hello everybody,
I m totally new in the psychology field as well statistics because i work on robotics. I need to prepare a questionnaire for attachment assessement between the human and the robot. As i understood from the web, the task does not consist on assigning the questions arbitrairly but we have to respect many statistical metrics such as "validity", etc.. When i watch a video or a tutorial, i feel like i undesrtand but i need a completely concrete example. Please do you have any study, tutorial or video that helps me to see how to design a questionnaire from A to Z with a concrete example of a questionnaire. Please help me ...

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Maybe the most useful thing would be a good research methods text for the social sciences. Kazdin's "Research Methods in Clinical Psychology" is a good one. People come up with new measures all the time, but if you want to really make sure you do it right, you'll want to check the measure's reliability, validity, and factor structure. You'll also want to make sure the language of the items isn't confusing or biased in any way. I think any research methods text used in psychology would cover these topics.
 
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I'd find someone to consult with on this project who knows the area. There are dozens of already validated attachment questionnaires already out there. making one from scratch is a tedious process that will take a lot of resources to do right.
 
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Like the other request for something like this, this is typically something that psychs expect to be paid or otherwise compensated to do. Measurement design is typically a packed graduate level course, not something that can be fully grasped in a youtube video.
 
you sound as desperate as i've been, so i'll throw in my two cents.. are you talking about attachment, as in attachment theory, which relates to highly significant relationships (parent-child and romantic partners)? or are you more sort of thinking about closeness or affection or fondness or whatever you are wanting to see between a human and a robot. i ask because if you aren't talking about very powerful and highly motivated connections, like a parent and child or romantic partners would have, using a questionnaire that talked about attachment would mean there'd be low " construct validity", it's not measuring what you are wanting it to measure. i say that because if you go around searching for questionnaires using 'attachment' as a search term, it might not get at what you're after. (unless you're doing something with robot nannies? or robot babies? are you??)although, maybe attachment has been used differently - i don't know.

i once came across a study that looked at robot companions for older people, which found that it reduced loneliness (in the human). sorry i can't think of it, but if you do find it, i think there was discussion about at least some kinds of affection and emotions and well-being related to interactions with robots, that might help you work out what it is that you really think you'll be able to measure. also it probably has measures you could use.

also, you could get the human to do the questionnaire, or, you could get others to observe and code the behaviour of the human with the robot, because maybe the human wouldn't notice that they're as friendly or not-friendly as they think, but others watching could. you would have to define in advance what kind of behaviours count as "friendly" (like proximity or length of gaze or wahtaever) based on research, and get everyone to agree on what that looks like when they code videos of interactions. good luck!
 
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Initially, I want to thank KillerDriller for the book. I may summerize that all i need is the analysis of the questionnaire reliability, validity, and factor structure.

I want also to thank WisNeuro for mentioning about available questionnaires while i really appreciate if possible plz that you attach only one example because
it s difficult for me as i m working in electronics with zero knowledge about this topic please give me only one complete example.

Thanks for MCParent, i m a phd student so there are no available courses in my university for second year phd especially if i m in electronics and all courses are in japanese.

Thank you very much sockit, yes i feel really desperate! I m using something called the inarticulate sound (which looks like the baby's voice) where each sound is related to a behavior. I want to see whether the human feels related to the robot so that the adaptation evolves and the human can learn the meaning
without explicit speech as in the mother child interaction. I have as dimensions i think: adaptation, cooperation, friendliness, achievement but i have no idea from where to start
 
Personally, I think the suggestion to find someone with whom to consult on this project and/or to use an existing measure (or modification of an existing measure) would be your best bets. As MCParent and WisNeuro both point out, there are entire courses and subject areas devoted to the design and evaluation of new psychological measures. And the existing attachment literature is fairly extensive, so attempting to re-create the wheel so to speak when an appropriate measure may already be available could be an inefficient use of your time.

It'd be sort of like someone from psychology saying about robotics: "I have this questionnaire I want to use, so now all I need to do is design and create a simple robot to use it with."
 
Thanks AcronymAllergy, is it possible if it s not so rude that you afford just one example of attachment questionnaire that helps measuring the relationship between the child and the mother in a context that looks like the context that i present. (the effect of mimicry to arise the empathy and joint attention for enhancing the reflective intelligence heping on acquiring the meaning). I m sorry if I may look insistant but I need only one example then i will try to design my own or change the provided example of attachment questionnaire in order to meet my scenario setup.
 
I honestly don't know of any off-hand, unfortunately, as I've done pretty much no work/research in parent-child attachment. One of the other members may be able to provide an example (although keep in mind that many such measures may be copyrighted), or you could see if someone in the psych department of your university would be willing to consult with you on the matter.
 
I would stick to the first option because we have no psychological department in my university and it is rare to find somebody talking english in Japan.. I really call upon the forum members help and i will use its as a tool i don t have to create my own just in summary i need to ground the attachment process objectively (and i have done its using the independence test, the cramer V, correspondence analysis, Mann-whitney test, Kruskal wallis, because even if i m not statistician i need to learn) and subjectively (using the requested questionnaire, and here i get stacked ).. So please, I would be very grateful if anybody can help by a concrete example of how to design a questionnaire starting from A to Z or by providing an attchment questionnaire that is related or close to the scenario that i explained. Thanks a lot and sorry for disturbing
 
Even though you are in Japan, you can easily connect with a consultant via skype or phone. For example, I had someone consult on my stats for my dissertation that I never met in real life and was 500 miles away. If I were you, I would start at the university where I obtained my previous education, and talk to a professor that you connected with. Ask the prof for ideas of people in the field that might be helpful to you and call them and see if you can pay them for consultation. If you can't do that, I would start looking at similar literature and look up some of those people for ideas.

As others have said, there is no way that something so complex can be taught over this board. I think you don't know what a big question you are asking.

Good luck,
Dr. E
 
Not really my forte, but I would begin with Mary Ainsworth's work...she has a measure of "maternal sensitivity." Not sure of the psychometrics of the measure, or if there is something more recent...but I think it is a good starting point.
 
Thanks AcronymAllergy, is it possible if it s not so rude that you afford just one example of attachment questionnaire that helps measuring the relationship between the child and the mother in a context that looks like the context that i present. (the effect of mimicry to arise the empathy and joint attention for enhancing the reflective intelligence heping on acquiring the meaning).

I would start with Beatrice Beebe and look at the types of measures she uses for her infant-parent attachment research, such as this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763737/ Now, her research quantifies very specific visuomotor reactions which are then correlated with several other types of self-report and interview measures (like the Adult Attachment Interview, which is an interview measure that requires intense training in administration, coding and interpretation, here is the protocol http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/measures/content/aai_interview.pdf). It is a good starting point if you want to see how you can extrapolate these human concepts to your methods.

I agree with all of the above though...I would consult with others who are experts in the topics that interest you. The human attachment literature can be daunting when initially approached.

So please, I would be very grateful if anybody can help by a concrete example of how to design a questionnaire starting from A to Z or by providing an attchment questionnaire that is related or close to the scenario that i explained. Thanks a lot and sorry for disturbing

Above (our collective responses) is probably the best you will get from this forum, which is at no cost to you. People are paid a lot of money to consult on "how to design a questionnaire starting from A to Z or by providing an attachment questionnaire that is related or close to the scenario that (you) explained." Good luck. Sounds like an interesting study, especially with the reliance on electronic devices in our daily lives.
 
I would stick to the first option because we have no psychological department in my university and it is rare to find somebody talking english in Japan.. I really call upon the forum members help and i will use its as a tool i don t have to create my own just in summary i need to ground the attachment process objectively (and i have done its using the independence test, the cramer V, correspondence analysis, Mann-whitney test, Kruskal wallis, because even if i m not statistician i need to learn) and subjectively (using the requested questionnaire, and here i get stacked ).. So please, I would be very grateful if anybody can help by a concrete example of how to design a questionnaire starting from A to Z or by providing an attchment questionnaire that is related or close to the scenario that i explained. Thanks a lot and sorry for disturbing

I get that measurement design likely seems like a trivially easy task to someone not in psych. But doing this *right* is a pretty significant undertaking, and really cannot be communicated in a couple sentences or a youtube video. AA is right that this is analogous to someone going on an engineering website and asking, "I have a questionnaire, can you show me a youtube video on how to make a little robot to use with it?"

There are a great many people who would be happy to engage in an international collaboration.
 
Ok, to let you know, I am an undergraduate student who has taken statistics, research methods and additional courses in psychology. I offered up some ideas earlier, thinking perhaps you were an undergraduate like me, not actually doing this research (which does sound very interesting!).

So I am in my last year, encountering for the first time just how involved this process is, through research projects in my courses. What I am learning is that just as everyone has said, what you are talking about cannot be done by one (specialist) person in a day, or in a week, even if they do have the extensive content knowledge required and are fluent in research methods and design. Even the selection of an existing measure, and showing how it might apply to your research, is time-and labour-intensive, even for an expert.

For example, you mention empathy. There are thousands of papers written on empathy. It has been defined and measured in various ways, looking at cognitive, emotional, behavioural and perceptual dimensions. So empathy, as a construct, has to be carefully considered in the light of existing research; just there, there are multiple streams. This is also true for mimicry and joint attention. Say that one or multiple forms of empathy (defined in one or more ways), or joint attention, or mimicry, are involved in attachment - how, and when? What evidence justifies your application of these concepts to your proposed method?

Further, it's one thing to talk about empathic processes between humans, but what additional variables would complicate extending (generalizing) that notion to robots? This should also be addressed. What about the nature of your stimulus materials? They have perceptual qualities that may affect the behaviour and subjective experience you observe and measure.

All of this involves assumptions, each of which must be substantiated by prior research in order to lead to valid interpretations. All of that work would go into selecting a questionnaire, and even more would go into creating one. (Also if language issues are involved - if you are translating English questionnaires to Japanese - that is another aspect of work that would likely involve pilot testing.)

(again, and i'm just a student - attachment seems to me to be an unsuitable construct for this proposal. in humans, attachment is thought to occur over repeated interactions with important people, in a number of contexts, over time, not one or five occasions; and it is definitely conceptualized as fundamentally driven by biological systems and needs. i sort of think limiting your measurements to the variables described in your second explanation might be more appropriate for what i can understand about your design, e.g., for cooperation, "how much did you feel you cooperated with the robot", etc. but i am REALLY not an expert and this is the sort of thing such a person could help you with.)
 
I am loving this research idea. I am assuming the attachment is from the human's perspective although it would be even cooler if it was measuring the feelings of the robot.

I actually think that attachment is not really the construct that you are looking at as that can be very specific to the infant/caregiver interaction. I think the relationship between Asimo and human would be more analogous to a human/pet relationship.

Unless you are talking about an extremely sophisticated robot that is approaching a level of human consciousness. If you have that robot maybe he could design the survey for you!
 
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