SCWK2006 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Bogardus Social Distance Scale, Participant Observation
12 May 2018
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SCWK2006 Week 5 Reading
Chapter 6
Questionnaires, surveys and scales
• Structured methods that generate quantitative data
• Mailed, internet polling
• Guidelines for conducting questions
o Keep questions short
o Clear and focused
o Sensitively phrased -> avoid asking questions on sensitive issues
o Social desirability
o Questions focused on the present
• Ethical procedures
o Promise of anonymity -> less credible in emailed surveys
o Confidentiality is easier to deliver
• Scales
o Measure informants' attitudes
o Provide a quantitative summary of scored applied by researchers to people's responses
to sets of statements about particular topics
o Common features
• Presentation of a series
• One response must be selected
o Attitude scales
• Indexes or ratings
• Participants respond to particular statements or questions set externally by the
researcher, choosing from a fixed set of responses from positive to negative
o Likert scales
• Most commonly used
• Series of statements given and asked to response using one of the response
alternatives
• Scales useful for practice evaluation
o Target problem scales
• Means to track changes in a client's target behaviour
• Useful when actual outcomes are difficult to identity
o Rapid assessment instrument
• Standardised series of structured questions or statements administered to the
client to collect
• Short, easier to administer, easy to complete
o Bogardus Social Distance Scale
• Works on hierarchy of attitudes
• Agrees with one will agree with all
o Social work research and practice evaluation scales
• Community living skills
• Children's motivation
• Observation
o Structured forms, researchers sit detached from those being observed and uses a scale
to record particular items of interest as they occur (behaviour over time)
o Participant observation
• Less structured form
• Participant and the observer roles of the researcher may shift depending on the
context and the particular situations and people within that context
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