Presents a strong rationale for the research question, which is thoroughly linked to evidence for the sychometric properties of the scale, and is contextualised appropriately in the background information and definition of the core theoretical concepts. It is obvious why the research is being conducted and what should be achieved. Identifies and emphasises the important information. Appropriate use of description balanced by thorough evaluation of the psychometric properties of the scale, leading to well thought out and justified conclusions. Reports the psychometric properties of the questionnaire used and provides sufficient detail of questionnaire scoring method.

Need to do only part one and draft. This assignment is in 2 parts. 1a and 1b. 1a is due this week Friday 11th 5pm Australian eastern standard time (aest). Part 1a is our focus first. so I have attached relevant things for 1a. I will pass on more information for part 1b after 1a is finalised. APA format. Total 3000 words, min 2500 for part 1a and 1b. So, 1a is max 1500 words. part 1b includes the abstract results and discussion.

Assessment 1a is about you demonstrating you know what are the things to look for if this new scale is "good". Assessment 1b is about demonstrating you can run the analyses and interpret them to answer the "predictions" you wrote about in 1a but that I provided you. That is the two parts are linked. It is essential for you to understand that these two parts are supposed to comprise papers like those I have linked you, but we will not make you do it all at once for your benefit. So use the tests I indicate for 1b as strong guidance for what you will do in 1a.

Religiousness or religiosity are not the focus on the paper. These are just the construct you are using to demonstrate your psychometric skills. You want to interlace the predictions about scale quality with information about religiousness/religiosity that you can find in the literature. The paper is not a review of these constructs or even justifying why a new scale is called for (which is super hard). There was a labeling problem in the data file. This has been updated but I suspect few of you noticed this. Recall that people were asked how much they agree with the five new items over three weeks. This allows you to test within and between week psychometrics. References provided may be useful or may not be useful as noted in the comment. Some at the very least will be called for to cite for the construct validity scales; others may just be useful to better understand the "game" of psychometric evaluation beyond the Hills book, Youtube, and the lectures.

Here is another post from the lecturer... Despite my efforts, there remains considerable confusion about what to include in Assessment 1a. You need to define religiousness but the paper is not about religiousness nor religiosity. It is about the development and validation of a new scale to measure the construct of religiousness. So do not dwell on reviewing this area of research. Instead, talk only briefly about why it is worth studying. For example, a brief, simple measure might be useful to conduct cross-cultural research on the pros and cons of religiousness. Alternatively, the scale could be argued to be faith-neutral so it might be useful for interfaith research. I am asking you to think here. If I give you all the answers all of your papers will be the same and you will not really be learning anything. Indeed, I have already given you the specific predictions which you should be allowed to build your 1a around.

There is no research question here. A research question is a weak kind of hypothesis. A research question is like, what are the psychometric properties of the new scale. A hypothesis is like, this new scale will be correlated with other measures of religiousness (like the ones I provided in the data for you) or in demonstrating sex differences similar to other similar scales. If you are going to predict sex differences, you will want to talk about what are the sex differences you expect and why. I know the marking criteria says "research question" but you need to be flexible here and not so literal. The markers are not so tied to the marking criteria that they will deduct points for not specifically having a research question.

You do not need to link the psychometrics from older scales to our new one. The psychometrics of other scales are irrelevant here. What matters is, objectively, what are the indicators you will expect to find for a good one-dimensional scale (e.g., factor structure, internal consistency). You will have already learned about all the tests for this part, so you should have some ability to detail what is expected even if you cannot (and should not) yet, run those analyses.

For example, you should know that a good scale should have an internal consistency above .70. Therefore, you might say, if this new scale is a good measure, you predict that participant's responses to the five items will be so consistent with one another that Cronbach's alpha should be above .70. You can then even cite some research saying this number is the standard threshold. Recall that the word count for Assessment 1a includes the Method section I wrote for you. You can free to modify that if you want, but either way, the total you will turn in must be no more than 1500 words with both sections as called for. As noted in a previous announcement.