Abstract #301066

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JSM 2003 Abstract #301066
Activity Number: 79
Type: Topic Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2003 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Government Statistics
Abstract - #301066
Title: Questionnaire Translation and Questionnaire Design
Author(s): Janet Harkness*+
Companies: Zuma
Address: PO Box 122155, Mannheim, , 68072, Germany
Keywords: cross-cultural ; survey research ; translation ; design ; questionnaire ; quality
Abstract:

Survey translation is too often seen as a rather simple affair, not one calling for great expenditure of time, expertise, or other resources. The money expended on survey translation is certainly a very small fraction of the funds allocated to questionnaire development and implementation. The paper sets out to demonstrate the relevance of survey translation quality to data quality. It illustrates that translating and assessing questionnaires is a complex undertaking that calls for proven procedures and cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural expertise. Standard procedures of testing and assessment required for monolingual instruments are surprisingly not required for translated ones . We address this oversight by first discussing examples of major linguistic and cultural challenges faced when trying to produce translations that maintain equivalence of measurement across languages. The outline of practices and procedures that follows highlights other issues, e.g., whether to translate, consequences of 'close' translation practices and dealing with multiple languages. Finally, we describe translation, assessment, pretesting and documentation procedures currently seen as best practice.

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