(Online Dating Industry Journal) Dr. James Houran, who publishes a weekly column on Online Dating Magazine titled Office Hours with Dr. Jim, has written an interesting column about compatibility tests that are done by online daters. In the column, he interviews Dr. Rense Lange who works in the filed of applying modern test theory methods to relationship testing and assessment.
In the column, one of the questions Dr. James Houran asks is "Designing surveys and questionnaires is often regarded as something anyone - even non-specialists - can do. Why is this?"
Here is an excerpt of Dr. Lange's response:
"...There are all kinds of bad reasons for this. The most important being that given we can all talk, we also can all write good questions. This reasoning has the same flaws as saying that since we all went to school we are educational experts, or since we have all been sick we all have medical qualifications.
This will not work for serious questionnaires. I find it amazing to see how million dollar decisions are quite often made based on shoddy questionnaires, guided mainly by questionable insights and theories that have long been discarded in the scientific psychological literature.
Maybe this is because people do not know how behaviors can be predicted quite reliably from the right indicators. Also, people tend to over-emphasize their own pet explanations and insights based on anecdotal evidence or mistaken media reports..."
You can read the entire column/interview by clicking here.
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