Week 2 – Deconstruction and Construction of a Survey

Allison Y -

Welcome back! Since the last blog, I’ve been working on my survey, drafting and brainstorming what and how I want to say my questions in an effective and smooth manner. I would say the bulk of this project is creating a strong survey where I can pull data to answer my research question so this step is a crucial part of my work. 

Survey-wise, I met Professor Mommaerts and learned more about what goes into it. First, it’s important to keep the language simple by putting it at almost a 6th-grade reading level. So, when working on the demographics/background section I had to keep on editing it to make sure the words were easy to read/understand and also weren’t worded in a way that could indirectly make a participant feel pressured to choose an option over another. Moreover, to ensure the participant doesn’t feel that way, my mentor recommended I always have the “Prefer not to Answer” option available, allowing participants to skip certain questions that they wouldn’t want to share their information on. Furthermore, I learned the importance of making the survey easy to fill out in a timely manner. Especially since there is no compensation like money for my project, my participants will be doing my survey on their own will, in their own free time. So, Professor Mommaerts suggested keeping all my questions multiple choice so participants can just click their answers instead of typing a lengthy response. 

With this information, I’ve been drafting up a survey. I already have a demographics/background section and am now working on the music and mental health questions. By keeping my survey all multiple choice, I’ve decided to use a Likert-type scale. A Likert scale usually ranges from 1-7 while the Likert-type scale I’m using will range from 1-6 (1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neither disagree or agree, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree, and 6=Prefer not to Answer). With this scale in mind, I plan to break my survey into three parts: music, mental health, and music on mental health. Each section will contain around 10 questions. 

Now, for the next steps, I’ll be meeting with my Professor again this week where I’ll show her the questions I’ve come up with and get her feedback on it. From there, I’ll re-edit anything and hopefully be on the path to finalizing it and sending it out to collect data! 

Thank you for reading and see you all next week!

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Comments:

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    Alana Rothschild
    It sounds like you are on the right track and have thought through many aspects of the survey. I can't wait to see the final version! Keep up the good work.
    February 20, 2025 at 9:36 am - Reply
    camille_bennett
    Sounds like a great start! Have you found any previous researchers that have used a similar survey tool?
    February 20, 2025 at 10:22 am - Reply
    shriya_s
    Hi Allison, I am glad to hear your research journey is going great! While creating this survey, did you experience any unexpected challenges?
    February 21, 2025 at 11:01 am - Reply
    allison_y
    Thank you Ms. Rothschild for the kind words! I'm excited to continue to develop my survey and gather data soon!
    February 21, 2025 at 12:30 pm - Reply
    allison_y
    Hello Ms. Bennett! Thank you for the comment! I've looked at some other researchers that have also used the Likert-type scale but instead used it for a different purpose. For example the scale I'm using is to analyze Agreement while other researchers use the Frequency type scale (1=never, 2=rarely, 3=sometimes, 4=often, 5=always). In the end, it all depends on the ultimate goal of the research study and what data you want to get.
    February 21, 2025 at 12:36 pm - Reply
    allison_y
    Hi Shriya! Thank you for the message! I would say an unexpected challenge was how much thought I had to put into the details of the wording/creation of my questions. For example, one question I wrote was "Listening to music improves my concentration during stressful times." My mentor then mentioned the point if I was going to analyze the passive vs. active manner of music since in my background questions I asked if the participant played an instrument. Then, I would have to create another question after to ask if "Playing music improves my concentration during stressful times." However, I can't assume all my participants play an instrument so I would need to put an answer option of "Not Applicable." But this led to another rabbit hole since it's best to keep the answer options constant throughout the survey, meaning I would have to add this N/A option for each questions which wouldn't be necessary for most of them. So, then I re-worded the question to just ask music in general. The question became "Music improves my..." In the end, it was a lot of brainstorming and editing but I'm glad I'm learning more about this survey process!
    February 21, 2025 at 12:59 pm - Reply

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