http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
identifying and addressing potential validity threats linked with online piloting using paid-for samples
Since 2018, colleagues from two research centers at Dublin City University have been collaborating to develop a measurement scale to assess individuals' ability to identify workplace bullying. Having agreed on an operational definition of the construct, an item pool of 26 workplace bullying scenarios, that is, short descriptions of "typical" workplace interactions depicting varying levels (or not) of bullying behavior, was crafted. The item pool was then split, creating two draft scale forms, estimated to have comparable levels of item difficulty and discriminatory functionality. The expectation was that, following piloting (n = 200), using a commercial online crowd-sourced platform, a 15-item tailored scale, sufficient in number and diversity to map the content domain without redundancies, would be created. This, in turn, was to be piloted with a larger sample (n = 800), and exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the scale's underlying structure and construct validity. However, unexpectedly, the preliminary data from a "soft launch" (n = 20) indicated that many respondents were completing the scenarios within unrealistically short timeframes giving rise to concerns about the extent to which they had engaged with, and understood, the operational construct on which the scale was based. Given that the validity of any inferences regarding respondents' ability to identify workplace bullying would be underpinned by the assumption that respondents adhered to the working definition of the construct, the research team undertook to recraft elements of the scale interface and introduce a number of "checks" the nature, function, and use of which are detailed in this case study.
Zita Lysaght, Michael O'Leary, Angela Mazzone, Conor Scully.
SAGE research methods: doing research online