Interview: August 3, 2007

Holly Hollingsworth, Ph.D

Could you describe what you are going to be doing in this project?
Near-term, we are developing some survey instruments to be used in the research projects. It’s kind of an interesting part of the project because we are using a lot of people at Paraquad, an independent living center, to develop items and they are giving us a lot of input on how to phrase questions and what they are thinking about when they answer a question.

Can you give an example of how you might have phrased a question one way and they might have phrased a question a different way?
They seem to want the language in their vernacular rather than the intellectual way of writing questions.

Is there a certain length of how many questions you would have on a survey? That’s an interesting question. We have a director who likes a lot of questions and there is a burden problem on the part of participants. Too many questions and they lose interest or they get tired. So, the trick is to ask as few as questions as possible and still have a reliable and valid instrument.

How would you describe for the average person what “reliability” means?
We want to know what their true score is. What their true feelings or attitudes or satisfaction with choice associated with an activity might be. How accurately we can measure that true value is what we call “reliability.”

NIDDR seems to be pushing for more scientifically rigorous research. Do you think you’ve been following those tenets the whole time or have you made changes to go with that new push for scientifically rigorous research?
Yes!