Issues in Cross-Cultural and Comparative Questionnaire Design, Pretesting, and Administration

• Activity Number: 613
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 5, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Gordon Willis*+
• Companies: National Cancer Institute
• Keywords: Cross-cultural ; Multilingual ; Questionnaire Design ; Comparability ; Equivalence ; Pretesting

Abstract

Surveys are increasingly becoming more culturally inclusive, in that they either extend to groups not previously surveyed, engage in comparative analyses that require cross-cultural measurement equivalence, or attempt to improve methods for surveying respondents from a range of cultural and linguistic minorities. Qualitative methodologists have therefore begun to conduct research striving towards 'best practices' in this area. I will review the major issues involved in this area, and present recent work that touches upon each relevant facet. In particular, I will focus on questionnaire-related issues, including design, pretesting, and interviewer-administration, across a number of cultural and language groups, and including buth U.S. and European contexts.