SURVEY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FREQUENCY OF VAGUELY DEFINED EVENTS: THE EFFECTS OF RESPONSE ALTERNATIVES

Experimental research has shown that the choice of responsealternatives can influence responses to questions about thefrequency of vaguely defined target events (e.g., feeling annoyed);the set of response alternatives is treated as information thatcontributes to the interpretation of the question. In a seriesof split ballot experiments we investigate whether such effectsoccur in a large-scale survey context for sets of response alternativesthat might be used interchangeably by survey researchers. Thepredicted response shifts were found in our field experiments.Those presented with response alternatives discriminating atlow frequencies reported fewer of the target episodes than thosepresented with higher-frequency response alternatives. However,the size of the observed shifts varied from zero to 13 percentand depended on a number of characteristics of the survey, forexample, the presence of "priming" questions and the orientationof the response scales. Response alternatives are not neutraland therefore must be carefully considered when constructinga survey question.     

WHAT DO OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS MEASURE?

Open-ended questions are frequently used by survey researchersto measure public opinion. Some scholars, however, have doubtsabout how accurately these kinds of questions measure the viewsof the public. A chief concern is that the questions tap, inpart, people's ability to articulate a response, not their underlyingattitudes. This paper tests whether this concern is warranted.Using open-ended questions from the Center for Political Studies,I show that almost all people respond to open-ended questions.The few individuals who do not respond appear uninterested inthe specific question posed, not unable to answer such questionsin general. These findings should increase our confidence inwork of scholars who have relied on open-ended questions.     

ASSIMILATION AND CONTRAST EFFECTS IN PART-WHOLE QUESTION SEQUENCES: A CONVERSATIONAL LOGIC ANALYSIS

A theoretical model of the emergence of assimilation and contrasteffects in part-whole question sequences is presented. Whenone specific question precedes a general question and the twoare not assigned to the same conversational context, respondentsuse the information primed by the specific question to formthe general judgment. This results in part-whole assimilationeffects. If both questions are perceived as belonging to gether,however, conversational norms of nonredundancy prohibit therepeated use of information that has already been provided inresponse to the specific question when making the general judgment.Accordingly, respondents interpret the general question to referto aspects other than the ones covered by the specific question.Contrast effects may emerge in that case under specified conditions.If several specific questions precede the general question,however, the general one is always interpreted as a requestfor a summary judgment. This results in assimilation effects,even under conditions that would foster contrast effects ifonly one specific question is asked. The model is supportedby experimental data and provides a coherent account of apparentlycontradictory findings previously reported in the survey literature.     

THE ANSWERING MACHINE POSES MANY QUESTIONS FOR TELEPHONE SURVEY RESEARCHERS

The proliferation of the telephone answering machine raisesa number of questions about the continued efficiency of thetelephone as a data-gathering mechanism. The most critical ofthese is what effect the use of these machines might have onestablishing contact with potential respondents. If individualsroutinely use these machines to screen calls, then their accessibilityto telephone survey researchers will be restricted. A secondquestion is the degree to which respondents who own answeringmachines and are reachable are likely to participate in a survey.A third question is the extent to which the incidence of theanswering machine as a response disposition might vary by thetime of calling and the respondent's place of residence. Thefindings of this study, based on a nationwide survey, pointto a significant proportion of answering machine owners beingreachable and willing to participate. Furthermore, the answeringmachine appears to be in use more on weekends than on weekdayevenings and in more urbanized areas than in areas with fewerinhabitants.     

A PARTIAL INDEPENDENCE ITEM RESPONSE MODEL FOR SURVEYS WITH FILTER QUESTIONS

In many surveys, responses to earlier questions determine whether later questions are asked. The probability of an affirmative response to a given item is therefore nonzero only if the participant responded affirmatively to some set of logically prior items, known as "filter items." In such surveys, the usual conditional independence assumption of standard item response models fails. A weaker "partial independence" assumption may hold, however, if an individual's responses to different items are independent conditional on the item parameters, the individual's latent trait, and the participant's affirmative responses to each of a set of filter items. In this paper, we propose an item response model for such "partially independent" item response data. We model such item response patterns as a function of a person-specific latent trait and a set of item parameters. Our model can be seen as a generalized hybrid of a discrete-time hazard model and a Rasch model. The proposed procedure yields estimates of (1) person-specific, interval-scale measures of a latent trait (or traits), along with person-specific standard errors of measurement; (2) conditional and marginal item severities for each item in a protocol; (3) person-specific conditional and marginal probabilities of an affirmative response to each item in a protocol; and (4) item information and total survey information. In addition, we show here how to investigate and test alternative conceptions of the dimensionality of the latent trait(s) being measured. Finally, we compare our procedure with a simpler alternative approach to summarizing data of this type.     

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.     

CONTRAST EFFECTS AND SUBTRACTION IN PART-WHOLE QUESTIONS

Responses to a question about the state economy changed whenthe question followed a similar item about the economy of therespondent's local community. The overall distribution of theanswers changed, as well as the correlation between the twoitems. Prior work has suggested that respondents may excludespecific aspects of a general issue from consideration whena question about the general issue follows a question aboutthe specific aspect of it. Responses to an open-ended item indicatethat respondents may have excluded a salient characteristicof the community economy when subsequently assessing the stateeconomy, even though this characteristic figured prominentlywhen respondents evaluated the state economy first.     

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE IN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: QUESTIONS OF CONTEXT IN FAMILY THERAPY

Family therapy's neglect of social context as a factor in its continuing distortion of women's issues has led feminist critics to wonder if systems-based psychotherapy truly serves women. Rather than heralding the demise of family therapy, however, the feminist critique is here taken to open up concerns central to the epistemological discussion underway in the field. At first, these have to do with the functions of "punctuation,""boundary" and "closure" in systemic epistemology. Later, the central question becomes that of the place given to context in systems epistemology generally, as well as family therapy in particular. Several implications of a more lively interest in context for family therapy's work are explored. These are discussed with respect to women's issues, clinical epistemology, and the challenge to raise novel questions in family therapy.     

DO OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS MEASURE "SALIENT" ISSUES?

Closed-ended questions dominate most interview schedules. Yetthe almost exclusive use of this form did not arise becauseopen-ended questions, its major competitor, proved to be weakindicators of public opinion. Instead, responses from open-endedquestions proved more difficult and expensive to code and analyzethan those from closed-ended questions. Although such practicalconcerns are important, the real task of survey researchersis to measure public opinion accurately. Using an experimentaldesign, this article tests whether open-ended questions measurethe important concerns of respondents—one of the long-claimedadvantages of this format. The results, on balance, show thatopen-ended comments reflect such concerns, suggesting that pollstersmay want to include more of these questions in their surveysof public opinion.     

EDUCATED GUESSES: THE PROCESS OF ANSWERING FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS IN SURVEYS

Responses to autobiographical questions are known to representmore than simply retrieval of information from memory; inference,cuing, and "availability" all play a role. Using responses toitems in four different surveys, we find that respondent motivationand ability, together with contextual cues, help determine howsurvey respondents answer knowledge questions about the worldaround us. Thus, we extend the domain of factual items for whichthe role of inferential processes is recognized, and we specifymore precisely the kinds of factors that respondents use inanswering such questions. We also find suggestive evidence thatattitudes influence answers to information questions, thus extendingas well the kinds of factors seen as likely to affect reportsabout facts.     

INTENSIFIERS IN BEHAVIORAL FREQUENCY QUESTIONS

Intensifiers, words such as "very" and "extremely", are usedto magnify the meaning of the phrases to which they are applied.In a series of studies we investigate how intensifiers in questionstems affect response patterns in social surveys. Our researchindicates that even apparently important differences in questionwording may in some situations have little or no impact; addingan intensifier to a root did not create a response shift forseveral intensifier/root combinations in large-scale surveys.Using both field and laboratory techniques we explore the situationsin which shifts do occur and go some lengths toward describingwhy this happens. Response shifts were observed for two situations.First, when "extreme" was applied to "physical pain" there wasa substantial and significant response shift. Second, when respondentswere asked a question without an intensifier and then had thequestion repeated immediately afterward with an intensifier,a response shift was produced. In addition to the practicalsignificance for survey methodologists, these results are importantto cognitive psychologists interested in word meaning.     

EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.     

IMPROVEMENT OF THE QUALITY OF RESPONSES TO FACTUAL SURVEY QUESTIONS BY INTERVIEWER TRAINING

In this study we analyze the effects of interviewer trainingon the quality of responses. Data from a field experiment reveala number of significant differences between trained and untrainedinterviewers in terms of nonresponse and the amount of informationobtained. For some questions, an interaction effect occurredbetween interviewer training, the use of tape recorders, andthe kind of responses. The effects of training appear to bedependent on the structure of the questions. Since such effectsoccur primarily with questions that assume a great deal of intervieweractivity, it is suggested that they are indeed due to the applicationof the techniques acquired by training, namely giving instructions,probing, and feedback. A brief analysis of the interviewer-respondentinteraction supports this interpretation.     

ASKING COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS: THE IMPACT OF THE DIRECTION OF COMPARISON

Questions assessing comparative judgments are often phrasedas directed comparisons, that is, a stimulus A (subject) isto be compared to a stimulus B (referent); for example, "Istennis more exciting than soccer or less exciting?" Tversky'swork on judgment of similarity indicated that comparing A toB may result in different similarity judgments than comparingB to A. The four studies reported in this article extend thiswork from judgments of similarity to evaluative judgments ingeneral. The results demonstrate that the direction of comparisonelicited by the wording of the question can have a strong impacton the obtained results. In some instances, a reversal in thedirection of comparison (i.e., comparing A to B vs. B to A)resulted in a reversal of the ordinal ranking. Implicationsfor question wording are discussed.     

ASKING THREATENING QUESTIONS AND SITUATIONAL FRAMING:

Although surveys are extensively used in sociology, there has been a relative neglect of the effect of task definition upon results obtained. The present article examines the effects of one such task variable, length and specificity of the cue, on response sets concerning the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed. In one survey format, respondents were asked to report the average number of days drinking per month, and the average number of drinks consumed on each of these occasions. In the second format, questions concerning the monthly frequency of alcohol consumption and quantity consumed were decomposed by twelve drinking locations. The results indicate dramatic increases both in terms of frequency and quantity between the two questionnaire formats. Implications of these results are discussed within the framework of the methodological phenomena of telescoping and the social psychological tendency to under-report threatening behaviors.     

Propensity to consent to data linkage: experimental evidence on the role of three survey design features in a UK longitudinal panel

When performing data linkage, survey respondents need to provide their informed consent. Since not all respondents agree to this request, the linked data-set will have fewer observations than the survey data-set alone and bias may be introduced. By focusing on the role that survey design features play in gaining respondents’ consent, this paper provides an innovative contribution to the studies in this field. Analysing experimental data collected in a nationally representative household panel survey of the British population, we find that interview features such as question format (dependent/independent questions) and placement of the consent question within the questionnaire have an impact on consent rates.     

Centrality and power revisited: actor success in group decision making

For many years, network analysts viewed positional centrality as a source of social power. More recently, laboratory studies of exchange networks have called the centrality–power link into question: under zero-sum exchange conditions, the ability of certain actors to directly exploit others has been found to account for power independent of actors' centrality. But most observers believe that in non-zero-sum communication networks, centrality should positively affect power. In this study we examine the effect of centrality on power in a communication network involving group voting on political issues. Using a model in which actors' votes are determined by the strength of their initial positions and the social pressures to which they are subjected, we conduct computer simulations to examine the extent to which actors in various network positions achieve favorable political outcomes. Our findings indicate that the link between centrality and power is highly contingent on the structure of the network. In networks with a central actor and an odd number of subgroups, central actors fail to dominate. In fact, in these networks, when peripheral actors are able to directly influence one another, the central actor becomes the least powerful in the network. In networks with a central actor and an even number of subgroups, however, the central actor dominates even in situations with connected peripherals. The highly contingent effect of centrality on power accords with the findings of exchange theorists who have studied power under zero-sum conditions. This raises questions about the nature of the distinction between communication and exchange networks.     

Developing a Low‐Cost Technique for Parallel Cross‐Cultural Instrument Development: The Question Appraisal System (QAS‐04)

Many approaches are used to prepare instruments for multicultural administration, depending on the scope, schedule and budget of the study. Sequential questionnaire development, the most common approach to developing cross‐cultural instruments, is also the most affordable. Designers formulate and pretest an instrument in the source language, then translate it into the target language(s) using culture‐specific tailoring. In contrast, parallel development incorporates target cultures throughout the design and pretesting process. The disadvantages to parallel development are that it is expensive, time‐consuming and subject to version control problems. Question Appraisal System (QAS) is a coding tool for pretesting instruments. The QAS is supported by an item taxonomy of the cognitive demands of a question and documents the features that may lead to response error. Results of the appraisal are used to revise question wording, response wording, questionnaire format and question ordering. This article describes research conducted to update the QAS to identify problems due to cross‐cultural and cross‐linguistic application of questions.