TASK CONDITIONS, RESPONSE FORMULATION PROCESSES, AND RESPONSE ACCURACY FOR BEHAVIORAL FREQUENCY QUESTIONS IN SURVEYS

Results from two studies confirm recent findings that (1) surveyrespondents often use nonepisodic processes to answer frequencyquestions about autobiographical events, and (2) task conditions,such as the number of events to be reported and the time usedin response formulation, affect the processes used. Resultssuggest that cognitive mechanisms other than episode omissionand episode telescoping contribute to response errors. It appearsthat new methodological approaches, such as directly or indirectlymanipulating the response formulation process, may be usefulin attempts to improve the accuracy of behavioral frequencyreports in surveys.