Abstract #300789

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JSM 2003 Abstract #300789
Activity Number: 235
Type: Topic Contributed
Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
Abstract - #300789
Title: Variability in Question Interpretation
Author(s): Michael Schober*+ and Frederick Conrad
Companies: New School for Social Research and University of Michigan
Address: Dept. of Psychology AL-330, New York, NY, 10003,
Keywords: question interpretation ; interviewing ; web surveys ; survey interfaces ; pretesting ; cognitive interviewing
Abstract:

Researchers from various fields have noted that even quite ordinary survey questions about everyday concepts like "jobs" or "watching television" or "smoking" can be interpreted quite differently by different respondents. Based on data from a series of laboratory and field experiments we have carried out, we argue that the extent of this variability is substantially greater than one might think. We also argue that the predominant mechanisms for reducing variability of question interpretation, e.g., large-scale pretesting, focus groups, cognitive interviewing, won't necessarily reduce this variability sufficiently that it becomes negligible. In order for respondents to understand what survey designers mean by the questions they ask, mechanisms for delivering definitions during survey administration that do not annoy respondents must be developed. In general, we find that definitions will not be delivered appropriately if it is up to respondents to request help. We report our work on ways that interviewers and computer interfaces (both text and speech) might deliver definitions more proactively, when--and only when--they are needed.

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