How will the reliability of the research surveys be determined?
Anyone can create a survey that on its face, appears to ask the relevant questions. The real trick is to design a survey or any research instrument that is also reliable. Reliability in the research sciences refers to a specific mathematical relationship of the participant’s responses across survey questions. Why is it important? Imagine a bathroom weight scale that due to age has a faulty spring that is thrown off by changes in humidity and temperature. Sometimes the scale is off by as little as 2 lbs, sometimes by as much as 10. How useful would this scale be, day in day out, if you were trying to manage your weight and diet with it? Not much value at all because this scale is unreliable. Its inconsistent readings interfere with your ability to determine your “true” weight. Surveys suffer from the same potential problem. Some items because of the way they are worded or because of the type of response scale used can introduce random error into your data, making it difficult to impossi
