Completing Surveys With Different Item Formats: Testing Equivalence

Studies examining the similarity of online self-report survey responses using different item formats have yielded inconclusive results. Additionally, no studies have used appropriate methods for thoroughly and correctly examining equivalence across conditions. We examined the comparability of survey responses across four item formats—horizontal radio button, text box, drop-down menu, and vertical radio button—in two studies. The second study added two response categories: optional responding and forced responding. Participants were college students at two institutions of higher education who were randomly assigned to conditions. They completed measures of computer self-efficacy, personality, and social desirability. Results of both studies indicated quantitative (mean scores) and qualitative (internal consistency estimates and scale intercorrelations) equivalence. However, there were notable differences in auxiliary equivalence such that participants in the text box condition had lower amounts of missing data than those in the other conditions, those in the horizontal radio button condition completed the study in the shortest amount of time, and participants across conditions generally preferred to use drop-down menus compared to other item formats.

Design and fabrication of wearable male-type radio button-shaped vibrotactile actuators

Vibrotactile actuators have been studied in a variety of wearables that require actuation feedback because of their accurate and rapid feedback. To provide robust and reliable feedback to users, wearable vibration actuators must be seamlessly integrated into smart clothing to deliver vibrotactile stimulation of the appropriate intensity. In order to solve the vibration attenuation problem due to clothing fabric, and seamlessly integrate the actuator, wearable male-type radio button-shaped vibrotactile actuators (WMVAs) were designed and fabricated. The WMVAs were designed with a structure in which a linear resonant actuator was housed in a stud, and vibration was passed through the fabric and transferred to the skin through the cap. Three WMVAs were fabricated, one with a cap of standard size and thickness, the second with a thicker cap than the standard, and the third with a wider cap than the standard. In order to investigate the vibration transmission performance of the WMVA, vibration perception experiments were performed on various body parts of the subjects. As a result, the vibration perception of the WMVA was statistically significant in all tested body parts. Using the WMVA, the mean value of vibration perception was 2.743, while that without a cap and stud was 2.062. The mean value of the vibration perception of the actuator with a cap 2.78 times thicker is 2.736, compared with the standard actuator value of 2.512. The average value of vibration perception of an actuator with a 2.78 times larger cap than the standard size is 2.743.

High speed script execution for GUI automation using computer vision

<span lang="EN-US">Software testing by using open source tool like Selenium windows applications cannot be automated, citrix based applications, flash websites and games. Computer vision based automation tools can be used to automate these kinds of applications. These automation tools works based on screenshots of GUI objects like button, radio button, text box, images, dropdowns etc. In this paper a prototype of automation tool has been developed which can execute the automation scripts much faster than existing tools like Sikuli, which takes much time to run the Automation scripts. The execution time can be reduced by using this proposed tool.</span>

Measurement Reliability, Validity, and Quality of Slider Versus Radio Button Scales in an Online Probability-Based Panel in Norway

Little is known about the reliability and validity in web surveys, although this is crucial information to evaluate how accurate the results might be and/or to correct for measurement errors. In particular, there are few studies based on probability-based samples for web surveys, looking at web-specific response scales and considering the impact of having smartphone respondents. In this article, we start filling these gaps by estimating the measurement quality of sliders compared to radio button scales controlling for the device respondents used. We conducted therefore two multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) experiments in the Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP), a probability-based online panel. Overall, we find that if smartphone respondents represent a nonnegligible part of the whole sample, offering the response options in form of a slider or a radio button scale leads to a quite similar measurement quality. This means that sliders could be used more often without harming the data quality. Besides, if there are no smartphone respondents, we find that sliders can also be used, but that the marker should be placed initially in the middle rather than on the left side. However, in practice, there is no need to shift from radio buttons to sliders since the quality is not highly improved by providing sliders.

Measuring Emotional Response: Comparing Alternative Approaches to Measurement

Scholarly interest in the role of emotion in accounting for how people react to political figures, events, and messages has escalated over the past two plus decades in political science and psychology. However, research on the validity of the measurement of subjective self-report of emotional responses is rather limited. We introduce here a new measurement approach, a “slider” format and compare it with the long used “radio button” item format. We assess the reliability and validity of these two approaches to the measurement of affect. The study examines self-report measures of emotion to three generated news stories about terrorist threats. We report that both measurement formats are able to extract the expected threefold affect structure from a ten affect word battery. The slider format is, however, modestly more reliable, and more efficient in time to complete, has the ability to limit missing data, and generates continuous data that is less truncated than data derived from the radio button format. Finally, we report on three tests of construct validity. Both approaches exhibit equivalent results on two of those tests. However, the radio button format does poorly on one test of construct validity, that on the anticipated relationship between anxiety and interest in novel information. We present an assessment of two methods for measuring emotional reactions to stimuli such as political issues, political figures, or events. Both methods are suitable for use in online surveys or computer-driven experiments. The traditional method utilizes labeled “radio buttons” that enable a participant in a study to select by clicking on one of an array of typically five response options, ranging from lower to higher of some identified affect term (e.g., how angry one might feel). Second, the slider method offers a participant the ability to move an “arrow” up or down to indicate how much (up) or little (down) they feel. The goal of both measures is to ascertain the level of a targeted emotion, i.e., how little or how much, say anger. The slider method has been specifically developed to be used with participants using a computer. The slider approach falls within the category of visual analog scales. This method for measuring affective responses to stimuli of whatever sort has not hitherto been examined to determine its reliability and validity. The literature on the reliability and validity of these measurement strategies is thin and we found no studies including an explicit comparison.