The past decade has witnessed an increase in different research investigations involving psychometrics and scale development. However, the majority of these investigations are traditionally centered on developmental psychology and consumer marketing literature. The scholars engaged in educational research consider the process of scale development as laborious, lengthy, time consuming, methodologically rigorous and somewhat prone to “criticism” with no imminent chance of success. These “stereotypes” or “beliefs” have also affected ongoing as well as upcoming educational research investigations. Consequently, educational scholars are content with single cross-sectional studies, while longitudinal and repeated cross-sectional studies are still rarely performed. The purpose of this seminar is to present the findings and associated research processes of the few recent investigations involving psychometrics and scale development in educational research. Three recent scale development initiatives will be discussed and presented, namely the Internet gratification scale, the photo-tagging gratification scale, and the avoiding photo-tagging use scale. All three investigations are influenced from the mixed method research philosophy involving qualitative essays and repeated cross-sectional studies with digital natives and young-adults. This seminar will also outline the main benefits, associated challenges and risks involved in the process of scale development research.
<p>Dr. Amandeep Dhir is an affiliated researcher with the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, Finland. Amandeep obtained his first PhD in Psychology from the University of Helsinki (Internet addiction among adolescents), and recently finalized and submitted his second PhD in the field of computer-mediated communication/HCI at Aalto University, Finland. He is very active in publishing and so far has successfully published 17 high quality journal articles since 2013. His work has appeared in different leading publishing forums, including Computers in Human Behaviour, New Media & Society, Computers & Education, and Social Science in Computer Review. Amandeep has made several research visits to Taiwan, India, Japan, South Africa and Norway, and he is currently engaged in several large-scale cross-cultural research projects in Asia, Africa and Europe.<br /><br /></p>