Scaling Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Scaling Study - Essay Example Likewise, personal space is apparent in a broad range of situations – even in crowded conditions where in the physical space is very limited. An example of such situation happens in trains which are always packed with passengers. In this case, people engage in certain behaviors in order to maintain their personal space given the lack of physical space. Moreover, though it is not a physical concept, it is possible to quantitatively measure personal space through the use of a dimensional scale. In an attempt to do so, a questionnaire, in the form of a verbal frequency scale, was developed that contain ten items, describing different spacing behaviors that people engage in. In order to be more specific, these behaviors were limited to those commonly exhibited in the train – being a common setting for personal space studies. For each item, five response options were provided which are coded from 1 to 5 – the highest score corresponding to â€Å"Always† and the lowest to â€Å"Never†. However, there are two different types of items made – negatively and positively stated statements, respectively – such that coding of responses was reversed for those items which are negatively stated. The total scores for all the items would be added and the average would be computed. Given this scoring, the variable, personal space, can be operationally defined as the degree to which individuals engage in different behaviors in order to prevent interpersonal relations. The assumption is that individuals who keep a large personal space are likely to engage to different spacing behaviors; hence, a high score in the test entails a large personal space. Validity Measures In order to guarantee that that the questionnaire would measure what it is supposed to measure, two types of validity were established prior to the administration of the questionnaires. First, the content validity of the questionnaire was established by creating items tha t were all based on observations made by previous researchers in their studies of personal spacing behaviors in the train. As such, previous observations found in published journals were translated into personal statements that constitute the items covered. Second, while it is not a good indication of usefulness, the face validity of the questionnaire was maintained in order to appear acceptable and relevant to the respondents. The questions were worded in a simple manner to facilitate better understanding. Also, the questionnaire was formatted to the convenience of the respondents such that they would only have to encircle their response for each item. After establishing content and face validities, the questionnaires were then administered to ten respondents who can easily be contacted by the researcher any time. In order to ensure that the respondents can relate to the questions covered, only regular train passengers were chosen to participate in the study. Consequently, the same questionnaires were again administered to the same respondents after a period of one week in order to confirm the stability of results. All responses were coded and inputted in statistical software for analysis. Based on the results, the respondents scored high in the variable that was measured. This means that people do engage in certain activities and behaviors that would protect their personal space. These findings confirm the established theories and expectations on the said topic. As such, it can be deduced that the question