TOWARD A REVISED FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING BELIEFS ABOUT THE CAUSES OF POVERTY

This study uses survey data from Baltimore, Maryland to assess predictions from the dominant ideology thesis and the public arenas theory concerning causal beliefs about three specific types of poverty—welfare dependency, homelessness and impoverished migrant laborers. Findings indicate that the incidence and determinants of causal beliefs are more complex than has been reached in prior "generic' poverty research and the findings provide greater support for the public arenas theory. Three findings are of particular note: (1) sample respondents have distinctive causal beliefs for different types of poverty: for welfare dependency, individualistic beliefs are dominant; for homelessness, structural causes are emphasized; a causal "middle ground' is most popular for impoverished migrant laborers (2) status characteristics do not operate as determinants of causal beliefs in a straightfor-ward fashion for any of the three poverty types and, (3) variables that measure types of exposure to, and perceived racial composition of, the poor are also significant determinants of causal beliefs. The effects of variables that measure perceived racial composition are particularly strong and the pattern of "color coding' suggests that racial prejudice shapes causal beliefs about the plight of the poor. The implications of the findings for the mobility opportunities of the three impoverished groups are discussed.     

CONTEXT EFFECTS FOR CENSUS MEASURES OF RACE AND HISPANIC ORIGIN

This paper reports on the results of a split-ballot experimentconducted in 1987 to test alternative versions of the decennialcensus long form. Two forms were randomly assigned and self-administeredin group sessions involving a total of 515 respondents. Theorder of race and Hispanic origin items was experimentally manipulated.The standard long form asks race, then Hispanic origin. Theexperimental form reversed the order of the items in order toreduce perceived redundancy, and to create a more restrictedframe of reference for the race item. The objectives of thecontext manipulation were (1) to reduce item nonresponse forthe Hispanic origin item, and (2) to reduce reporting of "Otherrace" by Hispanics in the race item. Objective (1) was met.Objective (2) was met for Hispanics born in a U.S. state, butnot for immigrants. The results are interpreted as reflectinga process of acculturation that affects how Hispanic respondentsapply U.S. racial categories "white" and "black" in the census.     

QUESTION-ORDER EFFECTS ON THE DETERMINANTS OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING

Part-whole combinations of questions are believed to be particularlyvulnerable to question-order effects. A split-ballot experimentwas used in a telephone survey to vary the order of a generalwell-being question and a set of questions on well-being ineight specific life domains. A number of order effects on multipleregression parameters were found for married respondents; noorder effects were found for unmarried persons, however. Theseresults show that conclusions about the relative importanceof specific life domains for general well-being and conclusionsabout the effects of unmeasured variables can be substantiallyaffected by the order of the general and specific items. Severalexplanations for the order effects are discussed.     

EFFECTS OF INTERVIEWER GENDER, INTERVIEWER CHOICE, AND ITEM WORDING ON RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS CONCERNING SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

We examined factors influencing responses to questions on sexualbehavior among adult respondents 18–49 years old (unweightedN = 2,030) obtained through a random-digit dialing survey. Basedon self-disclosure and perceived control the ory, we hypothesizedthat giving people a choice in selecting the gender of theirinterviewer rather than being assigned an inter viewer, andusing questions that are "supportive" of what may be perceivedof as nonnormative behavior (enhanced items), would increasedata quality relative to, respectively, matched-or opposite-genderinterviewer conditions and standard worded items. The enhanceditems facilitated responding to a number of sensitive topics.However, the effects of item wording on item response are oftenmediated by interviewer conditions. The "choice" results suggestthat giving respondents greater control decreases question threat.However, the overall findings argue for matching respondentsand interviewers on gender over opposite-gender interviewersor allowing respondents to select their interviewer's gender.Wording and interviewer manipulations reduced the discrepanciesbetween men's and women's self-reports of sexual behavior, butthey did not eliminate them, and in some cases they had no effect.The present findings suggest that males tend to be influencedby variations in item wording, interviewer gender, and respondentcontrol across a somewhat wider range of sexual topics. In general,the findings recommend matching respondents and interviewerson gender and the use of more supportive wording in sexual behaviorquestions. However, for assessment of some topics (e.g., sexualviolence) in particular segments of the population (e.g., men),other procedures, such as increasing respondent control, maybe a better choice. Overall, the data support the view thatin terms of preferred procedures, not all sexual topics arecreated equal.     

BASIC FAMILY THERAPY SKILLS, IV: TRANSGENERATIONAL THEORIES OF FAMILY THERAPY

This pape focuses on the basic skills and compentencies of transgenerational approaches to family therapy, the fourth report of a program of research surveys by the Basic Family Therapy Skills Project. In the first survey, a panel of family therapy educators listed the most critical or basic skills or compentencies of beginning family therapist with a transgenerational orientation. In the third survey, self-selected respondents rated these items according to degree of importance for beginning family therapists. Rankings of the items according to mean scores of the Likert responses indicate that transgenerational family therapy skills are founded in theory and can be identified behaviorally. The most important skills are those that use the self of the therapist to understand and utilize transgenerational family therapy skills for both therapist and client. Also listed are skills that many raters deemed "generic" rather than specifically related to transgenerational family therapy. Other findings and their implications for the future training of family therapists are discusses. Although the paper is intended for family therapy educators interested in their colleagues' ideas about critical skills in trans-generational family therapy, theorists and clinicians may also find it useful.     

DO RESPONDENTS REALLY "MARK ALL THAT APPLY" ON SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONS?

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of using "markall that apply" question instructions on survey reporting aspart of the field test for the Second Follow-up of the NationalEducation Longitudinal Study of 1988 Eighth Graders (NELS:88).Mark-all-that-apply instructions were compared with instructionsasking respondents to indicate "yes" or "no" to each responseoption on responses to three items dispersed throughout thequestionnaire and consisting of different topics and numbersof response options. For the three items, significantly fewerresponse options were selected with the mark-all-that-applyinstructions than with the yes/no instructions, but becauseexternal validity criteria were not available, overreportingto the yes/no instructions cannot be ruled out. Instructiondependentprimacy effects, predicted under the hypothesis that respondentswould engage in more superficial processing when given the mark-all-that-applyinstructions, were not found.     

Testing different rank order question layouts for PC and smartphone respondents

We studied the impact of different layouts for rank order questions on respondent effort, data quality, and substantive results among PC and smartphone respondents, in an experiment in an opt-in online panel in Spain, using an order-by-click design. We experimentally varied the device, the number of columns, and, for smartphone respondents, the position of the ‘next’ button in questions on trust in institutions.

We found some evidence of lower data quality for smartphone users but no evidence that presenting ranking items in one column performs differently than two columns. We also find little evidence that these effects differ by the number of response options presented or the number to be ranked. The placement of the ‘next’ button had little effect on performance on ranking items. Overall, our findings suggest that the format and layout of order-by-click questions has little effect on data quality, regardless of device used.     

Gender differences of psychological abuse in high school dating relationships

It is becoming increasingly evident that physical abuse is often accompanied by psychological abuse in marital as well as college dating relationships. However, no known research has been conducted to examine psychological abuse in the high school population, nor have gender differences been explored in relationship to psychological abuse of high school students. For this study, the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory (PMWI) has been modified so that it could explore the experiences of psychological abuse of 736 male and female respondents from a large Midwest school.T-tests were performed to examine gender differences of overall and individual scores of psychological abuse. Loglinear analysis was used to examine relationships between psychological abuse, severity of physical abuse and stage of the dating relationship. Results indicated that overall, there was little psychological abuse occurring in high school dating relationships, but detected six items of specific gender differences. It was found that dating couples were likely to experience significantly more psychological abuse in relationships where severe physical violence was occurring. No significant interactions were found between psychological abuse, gender, and the various stages of the dating relationship, i.e. casual dating, serious dating. Although overall, minimal psychological abuse was found, regression analysis indicated a significant relationship between total physical violence and six individual psychological abuse items. Findings are compared to the literature on college dating violence and marital abuse.     

AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF RESEARCH TOURNAMENTS

Research tournaments are predicted to encourage R&D. Recent theoretical developments in research tournaments are grounded in search theory. Although the economic intuition behind tournaments is straightforward, computing equilibrium strategies is complex. The participants compute a stopping rule based on the number of participants, the prize and the cost of research. It is an empirical question whether agents will behave as predicted or will employ simple "rule of thumb" strategies such as taking a predetermined number of draws. This paper reports the results of a series of laboratory experiments designed to test the predictions of the search model of tournaments. ( JEL C9, D8)     

Associations between psychosocial risk factors and musculoskeletal disorders: application to the IT profession in India

The exponential growth of the information technology (IT) industry in India has been accompanied with a substantial increase in the reporting of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The purpose of the current study was to identify and assess the contributions of prevalent psychosocial factors on perceived WMSD outcomes among IT professionals from India. About 77 IT professionals from India completed a survey set consisting of 26 question items from the Job Content Questionnaire and 3 separate question items pertaining to WMSD outcomes (pain/discomfort and psychological stress scores). The findings suggest prevalence of existing pain (shoulder/neck and low back) in more than one-fourth of the respondents. Additionally two-thirds of the respondents had never had any ergonomics awareness training. Co-worker support and psychological work demands were found to be the strongest contributors of psychosocial risk factors towards pain/discomfort and psychological stress outcomes. Findings from this study highlight the influence of certain psychosocial traits of the Indian IT workplace on perceived WMSD outcomes. There is a need to develop and implement intervention strategies to address these factors that may help lower the risk of work-related musculoskeletal pain.     

MEASURING HAPPINESS IN SURVEYS: A TEST OF THE SUBTRACTION HYPOTHESIS

Responses to an item on general happiness can change when thatitem follows one on marital happiness. Asking about maritalhappiness first sometimes reduces reported levels of overallhappiness. This reduction may result from a change in the interpretationof the general happiness item. According to this hypothesis,when the general item follows the item on marital happiness,respondents take the item to ask about aspects of their livesother than their marriages-in effect, the respondents subtracttheir (mostly happy) marriages in answering the general item.The study reported here tests this subtraction hypothesis byasking versions of the general happiness item that correspondto the different interpretations. A version of the general itemthat asked about general happiness "aside from your marriage"yielded responses that were quite similar to those given tothe standard item when it followed the item on marital happiness.Another version that asked about general happiness "includingyour marriage" elicited responses quite similar to those elicitedby the standard item when it preceded the marital happinessitem. However, reanalysis of the studies that originally demonstratedthe impact of the order of the two happiness items casts doubton the subtraction hypothesis and related models as explanationsof the earlier findings.     

Fear and caring: Procedural justice,trust, and collective identification as antecedents of voluntary tax compliance

We investigated the interactive roles of procedural justice of the tax authority, trust in the tax authority, and identification with the nation in predicting voluntary tax compliance. Drawing from fairness heuristic theory and relational models of justice, we predicted that the relationship between procedural justice and voluntary tax compliance that has been found particularly among citizens with low (vs. high) trust in the tax authorities is restricted to citizens who weakly (vs. strongly) identify with the nation. The results of a field study with samples of Ethiopian and US taxpayers as respondents largely support our predictions. This research integrates the role of important and well-studied social psychological factors that shape voluntary tax compliance and reveals support for the hypothesis in a developing (i.e., Ethiopia) and a developed (i.e., US) nation – nations with strongly divergent tax climates.     

Spacing, Position, and Order: Interpretive Heuristics for Visual Features of Survey Questions

We present the results of six experiments that demonstrate theimpact of visual features of survey questions on the responsesthey elicit, the response process they initiate, or both. Allsix experiments were embedded in Web surveys. Experiments 1and 2 investigate the effects of the placement of nonsubstantiveresponse options (for example, "No opinion" and "Don’tknow" answer options) in relation to the substantive options.The results suggest that when these options are not differentiatedvisually (by a line or a space) from the substantive options,respondents may be misled about the midpoint of the scale; respondentsseemed to use the visual rather than the conceptual midpointof the scale as a reference point for responding. Experiment3, which varied the spacing of the substantive options, showeda similar result. Responses were pushed in the direction ofthe visual midpoint when it fell to one side of the conceptualmidpoint of the response scale. Experiment 4 examined the effectsof varying whether the response options, which were arrayedvertically, followed a logical progression from top to bottom.Respondents answered more quickly when the options followeda logical order. Experiment 5 examined the effects of the placementof an unfamiliar item among a series of similar items. For example,one set of items asked respondents to say whether several makesand models of cars were expensive or not. The answers for theunfamiliar items depended on the items that were nearby on thelist. Our last experiment varied whether a battery of relateditems was administered on a single screen, across two screens,or with each item on its own screen. The intercorrelations amongthe items were highest when they were all on the same screen.Respondents seem to apply interpretive heuristics in assigningmeaning to visual cues in questionnaires. They see the visualmidpoint of a scale as representing the typical or middle response;they expect options to be arrayed in a progression beginningwith the leftmost or topmost item; and they expect items thatare physically close to be related to each other conceptually.     

"DON'T KNOW" BOXES IN FACTUAL QUESTIONS IN A MAIL QUESTIONNAIRE: EFFECTS ON LEVEL AND QUALITY OF RESPONSE

This article summarizes the findings of an experiment to evaluatethe effect of "Don't Know" (DK) boxes in a mail questionnaireconsisting of factual questions. In a split-panel test, halfof the respondents received a questionnaire with DK boxes andthe other half received a questionnaire without DK boxes. Theoverall response rates were the same for the two versions. Thequestionnaire version without DK boxes obtained an appreciablyhigher rate of substantive responses for many items. However,there were few large substantive changes in response distributionsbetween the two versions, and there was no appreciable differencein the response error rates.     

Depression and the psychological benefits of entering marriage

Past research has consistently documented the positive relationship between a transition to marriage and psychological well-being. In this study, we separate the depressed from the nondepressed to assess whether the benefits marriage has for psychological well-being depend on premarital depression. We also examine whether the effect of marital quality in moderating the psychological consequences of marriage differs for the depressed and the nondepressed. Results indicate that, on average, those who were depressed prior to marrying report larger psychological gains from marriage than those who were not depressed. The role of marital quality in moderating the effect of marriage on psychological well-being is similar for previously depressed and previously nondepressed respondents. These findings call into question the assumption that marriage is always a good choice for all individuals. What appear to be strong average benefits of marriage are actually highly dependent on a range of individual, interpersonal, and structural characteristics.     

Toward a social psychology of survey methodology: An application of the approach and directions for the future

Survey methodology is a relatively new academic discipline focused on understanding sources of survey errors. As an interdisciplinary field, survey methodology borrows theoretical approaches from other disciplines and applies them to understand how survey respondents answer questions. One field in particular, cognitive psychology, has played a central role in the development of survey methodology. The cognitive approach has focused researchers' attentions on the sources of error at each stage of the cognitive process respondents use to answer a survey question: comprehension of the question, recollection of relevant information, estimation and judgment, and reporting an answer. Although this focus on the cognitive response process has been positive and fruitful, potentially strong social and interactional influences on the response process have been underinvestigated and undertheorized. Thus, this essay argues for a revitalized research program in the sociological social psychology of survey methodology, given its rich body of theory and research. The current strengths of social psychological and interactional approaches are highlighted, focusing primarily on recent work using identity theory to understand social desirability biases. Finally, potentially fruitful future directions for research are proposed, matching sociological social psychological theories to the survey errors upon which they may shed light.     

INTERVIEWER GENDER AND GENDER ATTITUDES

This research addresses the effects of interviewer gender onresponses to a broad array of gender-related survey questions,using data from a probability sample of adults in the UnitedStates. We focus on whether gender-of-interviewer effects areevident, whether they vary by respondent gender, and whetherthey vary across several attitudinal domains relevant to genderinequality. While many items do not show statistically significantgender-of-interviewer effects, we document significant effectsacross a variety of items. When such effects are evident, theytend to involve both male and female respondents expressingmore egalitarian gender-related attitudes or greater criticismof existing gender inequalities to female interviewers. Malerespondents offer significantly different responses to maleand female interviewers on questions dealing with gender inequalityin employment. For female respondents, interviewer-gender effectsare evident for items addressing gender-related collective action,policy, and group interests. Using multivariate models thatallow us to represent both respondent-level and interviewer-levelvariables, we find that interviewer-gender effects are statisticallysignificant in most attitudinal domains but that the interactionbetween interviewer gender and respondent gender does not tendto be statistically significant. We consider the implicationsof these findings both for understanding the survey processand for understanding gender relations more generally.     

A nurse's guide to mental health assessment reference sources

1. As the research base on psychological testing has proliferated across various disciplines, a comprehensive review of the testing literature is recommended. 2. In researching literature on psychological tests, nurses need to rely on traditional print as well as electronic databases and Internet sites. 3. In reviewing test items or in using a test, nurses need to be aware of test-user qualifications and publisher copyright restrictions.     

Uncertainty and framing in a valuation task

Many stated preference studies report framing effects in responses to valuation questions. Framing in stated preference studies occurs when respondents use irrelevant information contained in the question to help them value the good. This may occur because respondents are uncertain or do not hold well-formed preferences for the good in question. We investigate if respondent certainty explains framing effects in a contingent valuation study, using data from a double bounded dichotomous elicitation format and a follow-up certainty question. We investigate if respondent certainty influences anchoring and the shift effect. We find evidence that the anchoring effect is stronger for respondents who are less certain about their response to the contingent valuation question compared to respondents who are very certain. However, the shift effect is significant and negative only for respondents who are very certain. Our results indicate that certain respondents are more consistent with the predictions of rational behaviour than uncertain respondents.     

Cross‐community comparability of attitude questions: An application of item response theory

The use of attitude questions is very common in comparative surveys as it allows researchers to gauge the perspectives of respondents toward social issues and explain cross‐country differentials in attitudes. Comparative studies implicitly assume that equivalently worded items are measuring the same construct in different settings. However, the results of these studies might be questionable if the measurement invariant assumption is violated and different groups of respondents do not have a shared understanding of the attitude items. This paper uses item response theory to compare the measurement of items and to test whether equivalently worded attitude questions about family dissolution are understood in the same way across various communities in India, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines. The paper also examines the interaction between the respondent’s gender, the sex of the spouse leaving the marriage and the responses to the attitude questions about acceptability of family dissolution.