Likert-scale surveys have been prevalently developed and employed as measurement tools to evaluate student affect. In a Likert-scale survey, respondents are prompted to rate a set of items based on extent of agreement and using a given scale of descriptors (e.g. strongly disagree to strongly agree). Despite the prevalence of Likert-scale surveys, concerns have been voiced such as the tendency of respondents to prefer or avoid particular categories, regardless of the levels of traits being measured leading to minimal differentiation among the items. Sort-rank surveys have the potential to address this problem. Sort-rank surveys, as known as Q-sort surveys, prompt respondents to sort and rank a series of statements into a quasi-normal distribution. For example, students may be required to put three statements in a “strongly agree” group, five statements in a “Neither agree or disagree” group, and three statements in a “strongly disagree” group. Forcing the sort and rank of the statements reduces the possibility of rating most statements a consistent level of agreement. This presentation describes the impact of each survey methodology on student responses by examining general chemistry student responses to an academic motivation survey where students were randomly assigned to one of the two survey types. The profile of student motivation from each survey methodology will be compared. In addition, since students’ academic motivation has been shown to correlate with academic performance, the ability of student motivation to predict academic performance from each methodology will also be explored, thereby describing the relative utility of each methodology. Research and teaching implications will also be discussed in this presentation.

Sort-rank survey vs. Likert-scale survey: Measuring students’ academic motivation in general chemistry courses

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.