CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

3.1 The Sample: Its Parameters

3.2 The Research Design: Its Specifications

3.3 The Tools: Their Particulars

3.4 The Procedure: Its Sequence and Scoring

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Chapter - III

Methodology

To seek scientific solution to researchworthy problem through

verification of the researchworthy hypothesis, implementation of the sound

methodology is a necessary condition. Hence an attempt has been made in

the sections to follow to deal with the sequential methodological steps taken

in the present investigation so as to verify the hypotheses mentioned in Chapter

II.

3.1 THE SAMPLE: ITS PARAMETERS

The data are collected on sample but the power of generalization of

the data depends upon two important characteristics of a sample taken from a

population of interest. These characteristics, as pointed out by Goode and

Hatt (1952) are, representativeness and adequacy of the size of the sample.

As such while selecting the sample of the present study from the population

of college and university students ofPt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur,

care was taken to maintain both of these characteristics.

Hence while selecting a sample from students population, adequate

representation was given to science, agriculture, social science, commerce,

medical and engineering faculties. From each faculty 50 male and 50 female

college students making a total of 600 Ss was selected through stratified­

incidental-randomization method from the university teaching departments

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and the colleges affiliated to Pt. R.S. University, Raipur. The level of education

ofthe sample was U.G. and P.G., the age ranges from 18 to 22 years with the

average age of 19.98 years and S.D. of 1.66, and by and large, these 600 cases

belong to average socio-economic status. The particulars of the sample so

selected are depicted in table 1.

Table 1 Particulars of the sample

College students: Stratified-incidental-random

Faculty Strength Age range

Male Female

Agriculture 50 50 19 yrs to 22 yrs

Science 50 50 18 yrs to 22 yrs

Social Science 50 50 19 yrs to 23 yrs

Medical 50 50 19 yrs to 23 yrs

Engineering 50 50 20 yrs to 24 yrs

Commerce 50 50 20 yrs to 23 yrs

Range of Education : 1st year Graduat~ to P.G. level

Total

Grand Total

Ave. Age

SD

Ave. SES

Colleges

300

19.98 yrs

1.66

600

Middle class

300

Affiliated to Pt. R.S. University, Raipur,

situated in the City of the Raipur (C.G.)

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Table 1 reveals that out of the many educational faculties available in

the world of education only 6 namely, agriculture, science, social science,

medical, engineering and commerce faculties were selected through random

method to give representation to the students population. Further from each

faculty 50 male and 50 female students were selected through incidental

random procedure to ensure representativeness and adequate size of the

sample. It must be registered here that the students ofB.A.lM.A. classes were

included under social science faculty as they study many subjects of social

science. Thus from 6 educational faculties in all 300 male and 300 female

making a grand total of 600 students were selected. The list of educational

institutions from where these students were selected is given in appendix

(A). Care was taken to match the male and female students samples with

respect to age. The average age of300 male students is 20.32 yrs. with S.D.

1.81 and that of300 female students the average age is 19.65 with S.D. 1.04

making the combined average of19.98 yrs. with 1.66 S.D. for the 600 selected

students. The selected students were from undergraduate and postgraduate

classes of the educational faculties mentioned above. Their socio-economic

status, by and large, can be said to be that of average or middle class category.

Thus, it can be said with confidence that the sample of the present study

attempted to meet both the characteristics of a good sample and as such, is

capable of yielding results that may enjoy the power of generalization to the

noticeable extent.

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3.2 THE ~ESEARCH DESIGN: ITS SPECIFICATIONS

According to Kerlinger (1978) research design is a blue print of a

research engineer. It is a data discipline. A good research design yields sound

conclusions and the best judge of the quality of a research design is the

impleinentation of a principle of "MAX CON MIN". MAX stands for

maximization of systematic variance; CON for control of extraneous variance

and MIN stands for minimization of error variance. I-Ience while putting the

hypotheses registered in Chapter II, to empirical test, an attempt has been

made to go for such research designs that are coherent with the nature of the

hypotheses and prone to observance of the principle of "MAX CON MIN".

As such to verify the 16 hypotheses bunched under first set of

hypothesis, the extreme groups design; and the (2)4 i.e. 2x2x2x2 factorial

design (fixed model with unequal cell frequency) were used. In the (2)4 factorial

design the first factor (A) namely, sex has two dichotomous categories viz. :

a l = Females and a2 = Males; second factor (B), namely, extraversion was

varied to two levels viz., b i = Low extraversion i.e. introversion (EL) and and

b2 = High extraversion (Ell); third factor (C) namely, neuroticism was varied

to two levels viz., c i = Low neuroticism (NL) and c2 = High neuroticism (NH)

and fourth factor (D) namely, psychoticism varied to two levels, viz.,

dl = Low psychoticism (PL) and ~ = High psychoticism (PH). To verify

hypothesis II-I and II-2 registered under second set of hypotheses the 2 x 6

factorial design (fixed model with equal cell frequency) was used. In this

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design the first factor (A) namely, sex has two dichotomous levels namely,

at = Females; and a2 = Males and the second factor (B) namely, educational

faculty was varied to six levels namely, b l = Agriculture, b2

=Science,

b3 = Social Science, b4 = Medical, bs = Engineering and b6

= Commerce

faculties.

"The method of difference" was the underlying design of proof in the

factorial design. In addition to this, "the method of agreement" was also

implemented as a design of proof where R-R type of research design was

employed while verifying the correlational hypotheses.

Thus, it can be mentioned here that the entire approach ofthe scientific

enquiry implemented in this piece of research can be labelled as an "ex-post­

facto" as the independent variables involved here are beyond manipulative

control.

3.3 THE TOOLS: THEIR PARTICULARS

!.!l Mohan and Virdi's (1985) Hindi Version of Eysenck's Personality

Questionnaire (EPQ) :

To measure extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, Hindi version

of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) prepared by Mohan and Virdi

(1985) was used. The Hindi EPQ has four subscales namely, extraversion

(E), neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P) and lie scale (L), each comprising of

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25 items. This 100-item Hindi version has been adapted and standardized for

Indian college/university students, in which each item is to be answered in

terms of either 'yes' or 'no'. It has split-half reliability for E scale = .69, N

scale = .86, P scale = .36, and L scale = .78 and the construct validity against

the English version ofEPQ has been reported as E and E = .63, Nand N = .66,

P and P = .34 and Land L = .58. This 100 item Hindi version ofEPQ is given

in the appendix (B).

ill Narcissism Scale:

For measuring narcissism as a psychological trait Raskin and Hall's

(1979) Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPl) is available in the literature.

It consists of 40 items in English and these 40 items constitute 20 pairs of

statements, one narcissistic and the other non-narcissistic. However, it being

in English, "A Narcissism Scale" was constructed in Hindi following Raskin

and Hall's (1979) construct of narcissism as a trait and using Likert's

methodology of scale construction. Firstly using, authority, self-sufficiency,

superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness, vanity and entitlement, as the

"Principal Components" of narcissism (Ruskin and Terry's 1988 findings) as

a base, 70-item-statements (10 item-statements for each component) were

prepared in Hindi, and using the five category response system (e.g. totally

true, true, moderately true, false and totally false) the first draft of the

Narcissism Scale in Hindi was prepared. This first draft is given in appendix

(C).

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This first draft of Narcissism Scale was put to 'item analysis' treatment.

As such, an item-analysis sample of 100 subjects (50 male and 50 female

college students) was selected giving representation to six faculties namely,

agriculture, science, social science, medical, engineering and commerce from

the local colleges and university teaching departments on the incidental come

random basis. This item-analysis sample was different from the final sample

of 600 cases reported under section 3.1 of chapter III. These 100 subjects

were further subjected to 70-item Narcissism Scale in a group of2-5 students

under laboratory like conditions in their respective educational institutions.

The protocols ofthe Narcissism Scale collected on these 100 Ss were

scored in accordance with the following scoring system:

Response Category : Totally True Moderately False Totally True true false

Numerical weightages for positive items:

Numerical weightages for negative items:

5 4

2

3 2

3 4 5

Using the above mentioned scoring scheme, each protocol ofthe first

draft of the 70-item Narcissism Scale was scored and for each subject a

composite narcissism score was worked out. Higher the score more the

narcissism was the direction of scoring.

Further these 100 protocols were arranged in an increasing order on

the basis of the magnitude of the narcissism score. The lowest score in the

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series of 100 was 156 and the highest score of narcissism was happened to be

276. Out of these 100 protocols bottom 25% i.e. from 1 to 25 lower order

protocols were segregated under the category of "bottom group" or "lower

order group" and the top 25% i.e. from 75 to 100 protocols were segregated

as belonging to "top or higher order group". Thus using the criterion of25%

top and 25% bottom two extreme groups of subjects were formed and from

their protocols each item's out of70-items, power of discrimination was judged

on the basis of't' ratio and thereby each item's discriminative validity was

worked out. For this purpose item-wise means and S.D.s for top and bottom

groups were worked out and the item-wise mean differences were tested for

significance with 't' test. The obtained results of such type of item analysis

are presented in table 2.

Entries reported in table-2 revealed that item No.2, 11,30,34,39,43,

44, 46, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, 65, 68 and 69 turned out to be

standing with statistically insignificant 't' ratio. Therefore these items were

declared invalid and dropped from the narcissism scale. Thus, the final form

of the narcissism scale constituted of 50 valid items having significant 't'

ratios. The nature and variety of component of narcissism represented by

these 50 valid items are clearly indicated here. Thus the 50-item scale of

narcissism comprises of9 items that are for measuring "authority" component,

of which 8 items are positively framed and 1 is negatively framed (Their nos.

are: 1, 7, 13, 20, 27, 32, 37, 41 all +ve, and 44 -ve); 6 items that are for

measuring "self-sufficiency" component of which 4 items are positively framed

and 2 are negatively worded (Their nos. are: 8, 14, 21, 33 all +ve and 42, 48

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Table-2 : Results of Item-Analysis Item Item "ttl Level Item Item lit" Level Ilern Hem "tit Level No. Type of No. Type of No. Type of

Signifi- Signili- Signifi-cance cance

01 (+) 4.00 .01 25 (+) 6.19 .01 ® (-) 0.66 NS Auth Exhi Ex,,1

@) (+) .048 NS 26 (+) 5.57 .01 ® (-) 1.41 NS SS Expl Entit

03 (+) 2.23 .05 27 (+) 4.28 .01 51 (+) 3.29 .01 Sup Vani AUlh.

04 (+) 3.86 .01 28 (+) lt86 .01 52 (-) 2.23 .05 Exhi. Entit SS

05 (+) 2.93 .01 29 (+) 4.66 .01 53 (- ) 4.54 .01 Expl Auth S~

06 (+) 5.69 .01 @ (+) 0.19 NS @ (-) 1.41 NS Vani SS Exhi

07 (+) 3.42 .01 31 (+) 2.28 .05 ® (-) 0.76 NS Entit. SllQ. Exp!.

08 (+) 5.80 .01 32 (+) 3.12 .01 ® (-) 1.41 NS Auth Exhi Vani

09 (+) 4 .57 .01 33 (+) 2.87 .01 @ (-) 0.55 NS SS Expl Entit

10 (+) 3. It .01 @ (+) 1.84 NS 58 (-) 3.14 .01 Sup Vani Auth

® (+) 1.09 NS 35 (+) 2.15 .05 ® (-) 1.60 NS Exhi Entit SS

12 (+) 4.53 .01 36 (+) 2.06 .05 ® (-) 0. 14 NS Expl Auth Sup

13 (+) 5.60 .01 37 (+) 6.24 .01 61 (+) 2.30 .05 Vani SS Exhi

14 (+) 2.62 .05 38 (-) 2.85 .01 li2 (-) 2.66 .05 Entit Sup Expl

15 (+) 3.45 .01 ~ ( -) 0.11 NS ~ (-) 0.64 NS Auth Exhi Vani

16 (+) 4.36 .01 40 (+) 2.06 .05 64 (+) 4.46 .01 SS Vani Sup_

17 (+) 6.33 .01 41 (+) 3.75 .01 @ (-) 0.74 NS Sup Entit Auth

18 (+) 3.17 .01 42 (+) 6.51 .01 66 (-) 3. \I .01 Exhi Auth SS

19 (+) 5.28 .01 C9 (-) 1.10 NS 67 (+) 4.71 .01 Expl Vani Exhi

20 (+) 3.48 .01 ~ (-) 1.89 NS ~ (-) 0 .59 NS Vani SS E~\

21 (+) 2.01 .05 45 (+) 4.64 .01 ~ (+) . 0.80 NS Entit Exhi Auth

22 (+) 4.14 .01 @ (+) 0.13 NS 70 (+) 2.97 .01 Auth Exp\ Vani

23 (+) 7.00 .01 47 ( -) 3.00 .01 - - - -SS Su~

24 (+) 3.29 .01 48 (-) 4.00 .01 - - - -Sup Vari

"t" for 48 df at .05 = 2 .01 and at .0 I =2.68; NS = not significant; Auth = Authority, SS = Self-sufficiency, Sup = Superiority, Exhi = Exhibilionism, Expl = Exp\oitativeness, Vani = Vanity and Entit = Entitlement. 0 = items dropped

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all-ve); 9 items that are for measuring "superiority" component, of which 6

are positively worded and 3 are negatively worded (Their nos. are 2, 9, 15,

22, 28, 42 all +ve and 34, 39 and 43 all -ve); 7 items that are for measuring

"exhibitionism" component and all the 7 are positively worded (Their nos.

are \ 16, 23, 29, 38, 45 and 49); 6 items that are for measuring

"exploitativeness" component, of which 5 are positively worded and 1 is

negatively worded (Their nos. are 4, 10, 17,24, 30 all +ve and 46 -ve); 7

items that are for measuring "vanity" component, of which 6 are positively

framed and 1 is negatively framed (Their nos. are 5, 11, 18,25,35,50 all +ve

and 40 ,-ve); and 6 items that are for measuring "entitlement" component and

all these items are positively worded (Their nos. are 6, 12, 19, 26, 31 and 36

all +v.~). This 50 valid items Narcissism scale is given in Appendix (D).

The split-half (odd-even method) reliability coefficient with Rulon's

formula (Guilford, 1971) were calculated of the final narcissism scale. The

same are reported in table 3.

Table 3

Reliability coefficient of the Narcissism Scale

Type of Reliabili ty Male Female Total

n=60 n=60 N=120 ,

Split-half , ..

(Odd-even) 0.85* 0.83* 0.84* Rulon's formula

* p < .01

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Table 3 reveals that the narcissism scale as a whole is standing with a

split-half reliability coefficient of .84, and .85 for male and .83 for female

college students. The construct validity of the narcissism (Hindi) 50-item

scale was worked out through internal-consistency coefficients in which each

principal component out of7, was correlated with the 50-item full scale. The

obtained validity coefficients are reported in table-4.

Table 4 Construct validity through Internal-consistency coefficient

of the Narcissism Scale

Type Full Scale I II III IV V VI VII (Nm)

Full - .775* .695* .732* .753* .678* .650* .761 * Scale

I - .524* .400* .572* .456* .393* .491 *

II - .509* .351 * .503* .279* .415*

III - .418* .425* .405* .544*

IV - .412* .457* .559*

V - .236* .495*

VI - .417*

VII -

Components: I = Authority, II = Self-sufficiency, III = Superiority,

IV = Exhibitionism, V = Exploitativeness, VI = Vanity,

and VII = Entitlement.

* P <.01

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The coefficients of correlation reported in table-4 are statistically

significant beyond .01 level. These internal consistency correlations according

to Anastasi (1962, P. 148) are essentially measures ofhomogenity. The degree

of homogeneity of a test has some relevance to its construct validity. Thus, it

can be said that the 50-item Likert pattern Hindi narcissism scale is statistically

highly reliable and valid for mcasuring thc trait of narcissism.

3.4 THE PROCEDURE: ITS SEQUENCE AND SCORING

For data collection a laboratory like conditions were created in the

given educational institution. The data were collectcd on a group of 5 to 10

subjects at a time. A particular sequence was followed in the data collection

and that was kept constant in the case of entire sample of 600 cases. First of

all Mohan and Virdi's Hindi version (EPQ) was administered, and then

narcissism scale (Hindi) was given with due time interval in a group setting.

Before administration of each test instructions pertaining to that test were

given to Ss so that there shall not be any confusion on the part ofthe Ss. Data

collection on 600 Ss belonging to different colleges and University teaching

Departments of Pt. R.S. University of Raipur was mainly done in winter

seSSIOn.

The scoring of Hindi EPQ was done in accordance with the scoring

keys prescribed in the manual. For each matched response with the keyed

response, a score of 1 was given, and for each mismatched response a score

0[0 was given. Thus, for 25 items ofE scale, the maximum possible score of

extraversion was 25 and minimum of 0; for N subscale, the maximum possible

score of neuroticism was 25 and minimum of 0; for P scale the maximum

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possible score of psychotic ism was 25 and minimum of 0; and for L scale the

maximum possible score happens to be 25 with minimum ofO. Thus, higher

the score greater the magnitude of a given personality dimension was the

direction of scoring.

For scoring the protocols of the Hindi version of narcissism scale, the

scoring scheme mentioned below was followed.

Nature ResQonse Categories & Totally True Moderately False Totally

Weightage True True False

Numerical weightages for positive items: 5 4 3 2

Numerical weightages for negative items: 2 3 4 5

Using the above mentioned scoring schemes, the 600 protocols of

Hindi narcissism scale was scored. Thus on a scale of 50 items, maximum

possible score indicating narcissism was 250 and the minimum possible score

was 50. Thus, the higher the score greater the degree of narcissism was the

direction of scoring.

Thus every Ss in a sample of 600 cases, has 5 scores to hislher credit

namely, extraversion (E), nel~roticism (N), psychoticism (P), Lie scale score

(L) and narCissism (Nm). These scores were further put to statistical analyses,

the results of which are reported in chapter IV under the caption "ANALYSIS

AND INTERPRETATION".