My name in lights

The Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is the main professional organization for I/O psychologists. I’m a card-carrying member. Actually, I lost the card, but they’ve got my info in their computer thingie. Call and ask for Betty. She knows me. And it’s a good thing, because I’m going to SIOP’s annual conference this April. It’s a conference full of firsts for me.

The first first is that I’m not having to take my own vacation time and spend my own money to attend. GameSpy wasn’t too keen on my going, which is understandable given that it had nothing to do with my job and I was covertly job hunting for 2 of the 3 times I went while working there. And that’s another first: I love my current job and won’t be looking for another this year. I can go to the evening receptions to eat cheese cubes and drink $4 Diet Cokes without pondering the least awkward way to beg everyone I meet for an interview.

The third first is that I’m presenting research this year! Some of us from my group here at work are on a practitioner forum, presenting some findings related to survey research. Basically we’re asking if you get different results depending on if you survey people at one point in time (like at the end of the year) or several points in time (such as after each service call). Oh here, just read this from the program:

This practitioner forum will address important real-world issues relevant to survey practitioners and their clients. Through the use of actual survey studies, the papers will answer common survey questions and offer practical recommendations to assist the survey specialist in delivering higher quality results.

…Lastly, in the fourth paper, Morris, Madigan, and Ashworth answer a very important methodological question: Do results differ between a survey that is administered annually and one that is administered on a more frequent basis? The authors serve as internal consultants for an Energy Service Company and manage several internal customer satisfaction programs. They were advised that customer surveys should be administered on a more frequent basis (via a web-seminar by Better Management), the rationale being that more frequent feedback allows for quicker response time to address and fix what is not going well and to acknowledge and reward what is going well. However, from a psychometric perspective, the authors were interested in how the measurement frequency would impact results.

To investigate their question, they compared item results between an annual survey and a point-of-service survey. The point-of-service survey was much shorter, but contained identical items pulled from the larger annual survey. Differences in mean ratings and response patterns were found. After finding differences quantitatively, they also investigated qualitative differences on the open-ended responses.

If you know me and plan on going to SIOP this year, let’s meet up! At least come by and see us in the Mayfair Room at 3:30 on Friday April 2nd. If you see her, tell Betty I said “hi”.