Dog Person Assessment
Are you a Cat or a Dog Person?
Instrument Purpose and Development
The Are you a Cat or a Dog Person? assessment is a measurement of the personality traits linked to each animal (cat or dog) as measured by the number of answers given in either the cat or dog category. It is a 10-item instrument with four multiple choice answer options for each question.
The instrument was developed by first determining items that would best fit the operational definition determined by the group. We generated a list of items and reviewed them all before determining which items would be used. As a group, we decided which responses we thought were most characteristic of dog or cat people, and which were more neutral. We then assigned values to each possible …show more content…
This assessment can be compared to studies that seek to explore predictive validity by analyzing the relationship between the predictor variable and the criterion. The purpose of a test of predictive validity is to determine how likely a certain score on the criterion is to occur; for example, this is seen in the Graduate Record Examination’s prediction of graduate GPA. In the case of this assessment, an individual’s score on the test would predict whether he or she would prefer cats over dogs, or vice versa. In the future, it may be helpful to collect concurrent validity evidence to establish a clearer idea of what exactly constitutes a “dog person” versus a “cat person.” In our original distribution of the assessment, we simply identified traits that we thought would correlate to respondents’ pet preferences. However, if we were to ask people about their personality traits while simultaneously observing their preferences for different pets, we could use that information to design a list of traits for use in future administrations of this test that would predict pet preferences with greater validity than what we had …show more content…
Because potential answers were labeled on a scale of 1-4, it did not throw off our data. We simply had to re-code for those answers. However, it could clarity of the questions could have thrown off people's answer choices. If time was not a factor, we concluded that it may be interesting to add items for different types of animals, or perhaps test for animal size preferences; for example, results might state that a person would prefer animals like horses, dogs, or hamsters based on size. Doing so would necessitate further development of valid operational definitions for each
Instrument Purpose and Development
The Are you a Cat or a Dog Person? assessment is a measurement of the personality traits linked to each animal (cat or dog) as measured by the number of answers given in either the cat or dog category. It is a 10-item instrument with four multiple choice answer options for each question.
The instrument was developed by first determining items that would best fit the operational definition determined by the group. We generated a list of items and reviewed them all before determining which items would be used. As a group, we decided which responses we thought were most characteristic of dog or cat people, and which were more neutral. We then assigned values to each possible …show more content…
This assessment can be compared to studies that seek to explore predictive validity by analyzing the relationship between the predictor variable and the criterion. The purpose of a test of predictive validity is to determine how likely a certain score on the criterion is to occur; for example, this is seen in the Graduate Record Examination’s prediction of graduate GPA. In the case of this assessment, an individual’s score on the test would predict whether he or she would prefer cats over dogs, or vice versa. In the future, it may be helpful to collect concurrent validity evidence to establish a clearer idea of what exactly constitutes a “dog person” versus a “cat person.” In our original distribution of the assessment, we simply identified traits that we thought would correlate to respondents’ pet preferences. However, if we were to ask people about their personality traits while simultaneously observing their preferences for different pets, we could use that information to design a list of traits for use in future administrations of this test that would predict pet preferences with greater validity than what we had …show more content…
Because potential answers were labeled on a scale of 1-4, it did not throw off our data. We simply had to re-code for those answers. However, it could clarity of the questions could have thrown off people's answer choices. If time was not a factor, we concluded that it may be interesting to add items for different types of animals, or perhaps test for animal size preferences; for example, results might state that a person would prefer animals like horses, dogs, or hamsters based on size. Doing so would necessitate further development of valid operational definitions for each