Relaxation: Stress Management Techniques

Dear Dr. Mahanta,
I really apologize for the misunderstanding that has occurred between us. Now things are clear to me. I now get your point. I appreciate your advise. Thank you. :D

Dear thesysthink,
With regard to your question on whether I am a Physiologist or a Trainer, sad to say, I'm not. I do research on topics about Stress Management though because I think it is a very interesting subject and it really helps me a lot on how to make myself stress-free especially with all the things that I do. I'm a very busy person and I really need the time to just get away from the "too busy world" that I have.
I am not really exposed to Psychometric inventories but I think it is a remarkable topic. As what I have known, it deals with the design, administration, and interpretation of quantitative tests for the measurement of psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, and personality traits.
There are times that we become unaware of our own feelings as well as the true feelings of others. I believe that through psychometric inventories, we can become more aware of these feelings, and our values, beliefs, and attitudes and also with others.

:D Dear Fritzie,
Thanks for the reply.
I have some theoritical background in Psychometrics, unfortunately did not have enough exposure in its applied apportions ..
My Area of interest was in Human Cognitions, and to know if that can be attributed .. sad to say I could not get enough data to be able to say something about my hypothesis. I made one such Inventory that was found 'Ok' by my manager .. I was an intern in HR then, completing a Project work.
It would be nice to have someone who can share something on Preparing and administering such inventories ..
Regards,
Thesysthing

Dear Fritzie,
Namaskar.
Absolutely there was no need to apologige. Communication gaps do occur. But a person's intention is important. Your intention is crystal clear. So let us go ahead. In the next post of yours the expression "stress-free " is most important. Please stick to it.
In the next post I shall elaborate my ideas.
Regards,
Jogeshwar.

Dear friends,
Namaskar.
So far as psychomtry is concerned, you will have no problem. Whenever you require please ask me.
regards,
jogeshwar

:D Dear Dr. Jogeshwar,
Thank you for your reply.
I have exposure in the areas of model based estimation and forecasting restricted in the field of Economic analysis only, studied psychometrics as an optional but haven't tried standardization of tests .. to be honest .. my work area doesn't permit for such experimentations (there is no scope, but I wish to learn it).
I would be extremely helped if you kindly discuss how would you standardize or work on measurment aspect while working on a new inventory ..
I have done administration of Inventories, though I have very basic knowledge on it (I have studied Psychophysics and Experimental psychology but not Psychometrics) ..
If you provide a sample inventory, it would be of great help .. :D
Regards,
Thesysthink

Dear the systhink,

I say that if any psychologist knows expermental psychology and psychometry then he can move to any area. As you already know experimental psychology psychometry will not be that authours approach differently. However, the most common steps as I had posted in certain other thread is pasted below.

As we are concerned on stress here I think better you shuld have a stress inventory. There are several stress measurements but now I am using Dato stress Inventory which is very very easy. Please visit www.dato-leadership-institute.com and request for an inventory for free of charges and the author Dr. Dato will send you one by e-mail.

Regards,

Jogeshwar

I am happy that you are going to develop a fresh questinnaire. Hope, in its finished form you will post it for others use. Presuming that you know psychometry/questionnaire construction I am giving you the steps below.

Step 1- Collection of content.

Go to your possible population of study. Approach about 50 persons from among them. Hand over them a plain paper and ask them to make 3 positive statements and 3 negative statements on the theme you want to make the questionnaire. It does not matter if some of them could not write six statements. Collect all the papers.

Step2- Preparation of the preliminary questinnaire.

Convert the statements you have got to question forms. All qustions must be direct, easily communicable to the subjects, as short as possible, unambiguous and must elicit the answers you want. Normally questionnares do have yes and no categories. You should have at least 100 to 150 questions in this preliminary questionnaire. The written request to the subjects what you want them to do should be before the questions

Step3- Collection of data for standardisation.

Administer this questionnaire on a sizable sample and get the responses. The standardisation sample size is not prescribed but my experience shows that when the sample size goes above 200 the statistical values go on getting stabilized.

Step 4. Item variance

Tabulate the frequencies of responses in each category of responses for every item. If your response categories are 2 then find out the probability of responses in both the response categories, one becomes p and other q. pq gives you the item variance. In such cases the value of item variance varies from 0 to .25. If you have more than one response categories then go for quartile deviation to get the dispertion values.

Step5- First selection of items.

First you decide how many questions you want to keep in your final questonnare. Now go on selecting the questions starting from the highest value. Select some more than the number you have decided because in the next step you will eliminate some more questions. Step 4 and 5 are necessary eyeing on normal distribution of scores of the sample.

Step6-Tentative direction of scoring and internal consistency.

Suppose you have yes and no response categories. Then tentatively decide for which response you want ot give higher value and for which response you give want to give lower value, like 1 and 0. Now score each response and make a total. The total is the tentative score one gets as per your judgement. But this scre may not be true. Therefore, you compute item total correlation. If the response categories are two you may go for point bi-serial correlation. If there are more response categories you may go for pearson correlation. Now for each question you are getting one correlation. The item which is having the highest item total correlation is most consistent with the construct which you are measuring. If your judgment on the direction of scoring was correct then you will get all positive cerrelations. In case you get negative correlations in some items then change the direction of scring for those items and repeat step go on selecting from higher to lower value items till you reach the requisite number of questions you have decided to retain in your final question.

If you are all the more serious about internal consistency then you can go for factor analysis in place of step 6.

Step7- Distribution and norms

Now get the distribution of the test scores. It will be a normal distribution. Then find out the percintile norms.

Step-8 Go to establish the reliabilty of your questionnaire.

Step-9 Go to establish the validity of the questionnaire.

Ask any other clarification if you need.

Regards,

jogeshwar

_________________

:D Dear Dr. Jogeshwar,

Sincere thanks for your insights, I am really helped.

I practiced upto step 6, as suggested by your methodology .. experiencing some problem in establishing norms, Reliability and Validity.

Can you please suggest some textbook on Psychometrics ? I have read something similar (related with Econometrics, Heteroscedastic distributions), I was trying to manipulate it using matrix notations .. it could not make of much use .. or probably I may need to use a completely different methodology (i.e. translating the model into matrix notation, estimating the parameters on GLS and then proceed?) .. I have strong reasons to think Psychology hates Mathematics :D !

Can I still administer a test without having Norms, Realiability and Validity ? (Will it be considered a scientific test) ?

If I could make a head or tail of this inventory, I shall surely put it on citeHR :D .. Its actually 'Human Incognition Profiling Inventory' .. Needless to say .. one single inventory cannot attribute Human Incognitions .. I wanted to map it under different stress situations (The idea originally came into my mind when I was working on an Exit Interview Project during my summer Internship) ..

In my humble opinion .. perhaps we can map incognitions .. if not using inventories, perhaps using projectives ..

We would like to hear something from you on projective tests also !

Regards,

Thesysthink

RESTING
“My current dictum for myself in this regard is " Life as a challenge cross it and life as a bed of roses explore it".”
Dear thesysthink
Namaskar.
The above quote is from my message dated the 27th May, 2005 in the thread “attitude is everything”. It is under cloud now. So I am resting till the cloud is over, if at all as Ram and Lxman had to wait on Rishyamuka mountains due to clouds and rains during their quest for abducted Sita.
Please carry on. Wish you all the best.
Regards,
jogeshwar