A social scientist is conducting an anonymous survey of
college students on their opinions on various academic integrity issues. The
survey is administered in four different sections of an introduction to
sociology. The survey includes 20 questions in which respondents can use a
Likert scale to answer various questions: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 =
neither agree nor disagree, 4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree. The survey
also includes 10 open-ended questions that ask for respondents to state their
opinions or attitudes. The social scientist distributes 480 surveys and 320
students respond. A graduate student is helping the social scientist compile
the survey data. When examining the surveys, the student encounters some
problems. First, it appears that eight surveys are practical jokes. The persons
fi lling out these surveys wrote obscene comments and for many questions added
extra numbers to the Likert scale. Although some of the 20 Likert-scale
questions in these surveys appear to be usable, others are not. Second, in 35
surveys, the respondents appeared to have misunderstood the instructions on how
to use the Likert scale. They answered “5” on questions where it would seem
that “1” would be the most logical answer, given their answers to other
Likert-scale questions and their written comments. Third, on 29 surveys, the
respondents wrote their names on the survey, when they were instructed not to
do so
• How should the researchers deal with these issues with
their data?
• Should they try to edit/fi x surveys that have problems?
• Should they throw away any surveys? Which ones?
• How might their decisions concerning the disposition of
these surveys affect their overall results?
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