Page 96 - PhD GT

Table 4.3: Rank ordering of the six response choices: Sample 1 (n=51)
Rank 654321 Response choice
Never
Rarely Infrequently Sometimes Often
Nearly Always
50 0 1 37 0 8 0 2 0 1 0 1
1 0 7 5 13 3 3 41 0 2 1 1
0 0 1 0
2 0 2 3 37 11 8 40
Generally people found the first task of rank ordering the response choices to be a difficult one to understand and to carry out in the abstract without relating the words to anything in particular. Respondents were able, though, to rank order all of the response choices with the exception of Infrequently. Only 26 out of 51 respondents were able to rank order this term. Even given the relatively fewer responses to this item, respondents were consistent in their rank ordering of the choices, as shown by the diagonal line in Table 4.3.
For the second procedure, participants appeared to find the first part of the task, namely questionnaire completion, to be straightforward and it took, on average, approximately four minutes to complete the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire. Some found the second part of this procedure, when they were asked to quantify the response choices, to be difficult. The word Infrequently elicited only 40 out of a possible 51 responses with 11 people responding “I don’t know what it means” or “I don’t use it”. Common time categories were identified from participants’ responses and are presented as the meanings given to the six response choices in Table 4.4.
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