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Activity Number: 512
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
Abstract #312336 View Presentation
Title: Investigating Nonresponse Error in Open-Ended Survey Items and Their Potential for Enriching Validity of Closed-Ended Measures
Author(s): Ashley Bowers*+ and Stacey Giroux and Denvil Duncan and Venkata Nadella and John D. Graham
Companies: Indiana University and Indiana University and Indiana University and Indiana University and Indiana University
Keywords: nonresponse error ; measurement error ; open-ended questions ; attitude measurement
Abstract:

With advances in machine learning based analysis of textual data (Roberts et al., 2013) and in web survey features to facilitate collection of higher quality open-ended data (Smyth et al., 2009), it is increasingly easier to combine open-ended responses with closed-ended ones to enrich the quality of quantitative analyses. However, understanding the reasons for nonresponse to open-ended items in web surveys and their relationship with attitudinal measures has received little attention (see Reja et al., 2003) and is a first step in effectively utilizing these data. Second, properties of open-ended responses including sophistication, attitude strength and uniqueness can be coded and correlated with closed-ended knowledge or attitude strength items to identify limitations in these measures. With data from an Indiana University School of Public Environmental Affairs web survey of 2,087 US adults from GfK's probability-based KnowledgePanel, we model nonresponse in open-ended items on attitudes toward road financing alternatives as a function of demographic and attitudinal covariates and correlate properties of the open-ended responses with closed-ended measures to assess validity.


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