I am Liza from India,doing Ph.D in Education.I am having lots of doubts about research tools;basic difference between scale,inventories,questionnaires etc.how to standardise each tool? ,When to use each of them?etc. etc. Can anybody suggest a good book dealing this area in detail?Hope to get a help from my fellows.
First of all I think you should understand the research questions to be answered in your study. To answer research questions you need data. Then comes problem that” how am I going to collect the data required?”. When you are in that stage you have to think of instruments that you can use in collecting required data. To collect data reliable instruments. For instance if you want to measure the weight of an object accurately, definitely you will have select reliable scale to do the job. Similarly in your research too you need to use most reliable instriments collect data to answer your research questions.In doing so,in some cases you may want to use questionnaires, sometimes interview schedules, or even classroom observation schedules scales etc etc. There may be occasions where you may want to use more than one instrument.It all depends on your research question/Hypothesis.