Information on the aim and purpose of the test:
Questions 9 and 10 are asked only of those respondents who indicated in Question 8 that they had deviated in any way from their original research objectives or research questions. Question 9 captures the reasons for the deviation, while Question 10 captures the specific results of the original analyses, provided that, according to Question 9, the respondent decided to take a different approach to analyzing the data based on those results.
The pretest was designed to determine whether the lists of response options in both questions are complete or whether additional options should be included.
Findings:
Seven participants indicated in one of the two versions of Question 8 that they had deviated in some way from their original research objectives or questions. The reasons for this are listed in Table 8 (Frequency Distribution for Question 9).
All of these participants stated that the list of response options in Question 9 was complete; however, this was due in part to the inclusion of an open-ended “Other” category, which three of the seven participants utilized.
Three participants pointed out that the response option “Feedback at conferences…” was too narrowly defined and could be expanded to include feedback from colleagues, co-authors, or mentors:
Two test persons indicated in Question 9 that the originally planned analyses had not yielded the expected results and that a different evaluation approach had therefore been chosen. These two persons were presented with Question 10 and asked what the results of the original analyses were like (see Table 9). Here, too, both test persons indicated that the list of answer options was complete.
