Estimation of Expected Academic Engagement Behaviors: The Use of Vague Quantifiers Versus Tallied Responses

• In Event: Roundtable Session 104
  In Roundtable Session: Applications in Survey Research: Development, Data Analysis, and Methods

Abstract

There is little is known about how we estimate expected academic behaviors. This study is based on prior research regarding the importance of academic expectations (e.g., Howard, 2005), and research on estimation of behavior frequency (e.g., Schaeffer & Presser, 2003). One finding from this study is that the use of vague quantifiers is associated with larger differences (gap) between past behavior and expected behavior than use of tallied data. It maybe that the magnitude of this gap is more of an artifact of the response set, then any real gap in behavior. Many other implications will also be discussed in the final paper.

Authors

• James S. Cole, Indiana University

• Ali Korkmaz, Accord Institute for Education Research