Validity in Questionnaires is Impacted by How People Want to be Seen!
There are a lot of outside factors that affect how people answer surveys and questionnaires. These outside factors can affect the validity of these surveys that psychologists often use to determine the population’s opinion of current events. This may affect the validity of their findings. As an example from my personal experience, there was a time where outside factors influenced the answers I gave in response to a questionnaire by a psychology student.
The first few questions were standard information such as my age, what year of university I was in, and my faculty. However, my anxiety started was when the student began to ask about my religious background (Christian ) and to which degree do I practice it (very little). I became anxious since the last time someone asked questions about my religion, I was caught off guard: under the pretext of completing a survey, I was instead persistently asked to join a Christian prayer club .I had also become anxious about the way these questions were progressing because these questions made me think of the “Quebec Charter of Values”, a hot topic during this time. While I have no problem discussing this issue, I did not believe that a questionnaire was the right way to get people’s opinion on the matter. My assumption seemed even more likely as the girl began to show me religious symbols such as crosses and hijabs and asked me to identify them. While I was answering these questions, I felt a wave a panic wash over me. I did not remember what these symbols were called from the top my head. I began to wonder whether or not the girl was judging me about my knowledge of other religions.
Within this short ten minute quiz, I began to question whether or not I would be seen as being intolerant. This panic was so overwhelming that I could not even identify pictures of religious symbols that I would normally be able to identify , I kept responding with a simple “sorry, I don’t know.” With each picture she showed, I felt more and more embarrassed in front of this complete stranger.
Finally, after she was done asking me to identify the pictures, the girl asked me to rate my feelings about various religious issues on scale from one to ten about religious issues. This included questions such as “do you believe that covering your face makes you a security risk?” or “do you get afraid after seeing someone dressed in a hijab?” Since I did not want to seem even more intolerant to these issues, I actively answered in a way that seemed more accepting to different religions, even if I did not necessary agree with them. In my mind, even if I did not agree, there was no way to explain why I felt a certain way towards these different religions. Overall, I let the way I wanted to be seen affect my answers, making the questionnaire lose its validity in the process. I believe this is a big issue in psychological testing. Sometimes, people just do not answer honestly.
