I’ve now completed data collection for my pilot survey, and have taken a peek at it in the statistics program SPSS. I haven’t used this program before, but it looks like it should be fairly easy to learn (famous last words!). I’m now coding in the correct answers.
Here’s what my data looks like.
I thought that I’d gotten 408 responses from students, but when I looked more closely, several hadn’t answered all the questions. I really only got 268 usable responses, but that’s still enough since I only needed 5 times the number of questions (51).
Tove and Torstein helped me to get started today with exporting and “cleaning” my data. They also showed me how to do the tests I need in order to determine which questions (called “items” in research) are useful, and to eliminate items that aren’t useful. For this I’ll use Classical test theory (Point biserial correlation and Item facility), Exploratory factor analysis, and Item response theory.
Yippee! I’m on my way!