Hello All,
I am a graduate student working on my master's degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
I have been working hard on my thesis proposal and I have produced a decent rough draft; however, I am in the process of manipulating my methods section.
I am trying to come up with tasks that involve problem solving and planning, and that may also be used to measure resiliency or task persistence. One difficulty with this is that many problem solving activities end up being a measure of simple intelligence, rather than resilience.
Any suggestions for task activities will be very much appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
John Hale
· In the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Feather describes a 'insoluble' task --still so complex that the subject is not aware of it. Following, the complete reference:
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
1961, Vol. 03, No. 3, 552-561
THE RELATIONSHIP OF PERSISTENCE AT A TASK TO EXPECTATION
OF SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT RELATED MOTIVES1
N. T. FEATHER
· One activity that comes to mind is a cryptic puzzle (or crossword). We used these in a study where we manipulated the participants' levels of knowledge (we provided training on how to solve the puzzles that differed in intensity) and irrelevance (information about cryptics that was non-tangential to performing the task). The cryptics themselves can be quite tough, especially if you did an entire cryptic crossword, so persistence and resilience is important.
We haven't published our article on this study yet (we recorded video of groups solving the cryptics that has taken forever to code, but we just recently finished and are moving on to analysis), but you can check out Wikipedia for a quick look through what the puzzles look like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_crossword). I'm not exactly sure whether it will work for you or not, but I figured it was worth mentioning. Good luck
· I have heard of using anagrams that are not solvable and measuring the amount of time participants tried to complete the task. I think it was used by Amir Erez.
· Have you considered using unsolvable anagrams? Time spent trying to solve them is a common way of measuring task persistence. See Sandelands, Brockner and Glynn (JAP, 1988). Be cautious about any self-reported attitudinal/perceptual DVs captured after this task, though, since working on insoluble tasks is ego-depleting (see Baumeister on this front).
· How about trying unsolvable mazes or puzzles?
· There is a sub variable in the engagement scale on resilience....see that it may help
Schaufeli et al 2002, Journal of Happiness Studies.