Business Research

a. Matel wants to know how preschool children react to a sing-along video game where the child must sing along with an animated character and guess the next word in the song at various points in the video.

A graphic rating scale with smiley faces would apply here although preschool children cannot read, nor can they relate to an abstract concept such as a scale. Use a small number of categories (say three) even though preschoolers think concretely, and don’t use a neutral category because it is very likely the children will form an opinion. Having one or two children tell the researcher the difference between the faces can assess face validity.

b. TCBY is testing five new flavors of yogurt and wants to know how its customers rate each one on sweetness, flavor strength, and richness of taste.

TCBY needs evaluations on three subjective properties based on taste tests of each yogurt flavor. Considerations include the following. There is no need for a symmetric scale as it is very unlikely that the flavors would be sour, weak, or not rich. It is also doubtful that tasters will have a “no opinion” reaction to the flavors. Also, how much can a person discriminate in reporting a taste? Not much, so the scale should be no more than five gradations with labels because people do not judge flavors with numbers.

Here is an example of the sweetness scale.

Not Somewhat Very

Sweet Sweet Sweet Sweet

The face validity of this scale is obvious.

c. A pharmaceutical company wants to find out how much a new Federal law eliminating dispensing of free sample prescription drugs by doctors will affect their intentions to prescribe generic versus branded drugs for their patients.

This is an instance of measuring intentions so a 0% to 100% intentions scale (see Table 10.8) will fit. Eleven categories (0%, 10%, etc.) can be used as doctors can be expected to understand likelihoods of acting. Face validity is apparent as the scale...