EXERCISE 15.1: IMPROVING SURVEY ITEMS OBJECTIVE: To identify and correct poorly written survey items.

Each of the items below share the following five-point Likert-type response scale:

For each item, determine whether the item is clearly written or in need of improvement.
If the item is in need of improvement, rewrite the item to eliminate the problem.
1. Many people fail to realize that the U.S. government is secretly run by a little-known, small group of individuals.
2. Advances in CAT and IRT have had a profound effect on the field of testing.
3. I will vote for Senator Wilson in the upcoming election.
4. The best times of my life were in high school and college.
5. I am in favor of our city council’s revitalization plan.
6. Although the Christian Bible has revealed many essential truths, there are some passages of the Bible that we will never understand.
7. I tend to be shy.

Thirty-five individuals served as SMEs to provide rational ratings of the items.
Each rater was given detailed written and verbal instructions on how to complete the ratings. SMEs were provided with the definition of each of the five functional needs subdimensions and asked to rate the degree to which each item assessed its particular functional need. A five-point Likert-type scale was provided, with response options ranging from 0 for “No relevance” in assessing the defined functional need to 4 for “Highly relevant” to assessing the defined functional need.
The resulting data file is titled “Joinership Rational Rating.sav” (see Appendix B).
A sample of 230 respondents was then administered the items. These individuals were asked to indicate how much they agreed with each item using the following five-point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree.