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Previous studies suggest that refusals form the largest proportion of nonresponse for household surveys. As face-to-face household health surveys are uncommon in several countries, it might be advantageous for prospective surveys to preemptively tackle respondents' refusal to survey participation. Using contact history data from the Saudi National Mental Health Survey, we examined the relationship between social environmental factors, respondent characteristics, survey request concerns recorded by interviewers, and respondents' propensity to refuse to participate in the survey. Content analysis and logistic regressions were conducted. Our findings suggest that urbanicity, region, socioeconomic status, age, and gender are associated with refusal. Patriarchal gatekeepers and specific survey-related concerns are more likely to lead to temporary refusals compared to final refusals. These results have implications for survey researchers employing similar recruitment and data collection methods, for example in tailoring refusal conversion strategies for interviewers to address concerns expressed by Saudi and/or culturally similar respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiescence is often defined as the systematic selection of agreeable ("strongly agree") or affirmative ("yes") responses to survey items, regardless of item content or directionality. This definition implies that acquiescence is immune to item characteristics; however, the influence of item characteristics on acquiescence remains largely unexplored. We examined the influence of eight item characteristics on acquiescence in a telephone survey of 400 Latinos and non-Latino Whites: qualified wording, mental comparisons, negated wording, unfamiliar terms, ambiguous wording, knowledge accessibility, item length, and polysyllabic wording. Negated and ambiguous wording was associated with reduced acquiescence for the full sample as well as subsamples stratified by ethnicity and sociodemographic characteristics. This effect was strongest among younger, more educated, and non-Latino white respondents. No other item characteristics had a significant influence on respondent acquiescence. Findings from this study suggest that acquiescence may be affected by interactions between respondent and item characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standardized interviewing (SI) and conversational interviewing are two approaches to collect survey data that differ in how interviewers address respondent confusion. This article examines interviewer–respondent interactions that occur during these two techniques, focusing on requests for and provisions of clarification. The data derive from an experimental study in Germany, where the face-to-face interviews were audio-recorded. A sample of 111 interviews was coded in detail. We find that conversational interviewers do make use of the ability to clarify respondent confusion. Although the technique improved response accuracy in the main study compared to SI, conversational interviewers seem to provide clarifications even when there is no evidence of respondent confusion. This may lengthen administration time and potentially increase data collection costs. Conversational interviewers also employ neutral probes, which are generally associated with standardized interviews, at an unexpectedly high rate. We conclude with suggestions for practice and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that check-all-that-apply (CATA) and forced-choice (FC) question formats do not produce comparable results. The cognitive processes underlying respondents’ answers to both types of formats still require clarification. This study contributes to filling this gap by using eye-tracking data. Both formats are compared by analyzing attention processes and the cognitive effort respondents spend while answering one factual and one opinion question, respectively. No difference in cognitive effort spent on the factual question was found, whereas for the opinion question, respondents invested more cognitive effort in the FC than in the CATA condition. The findings indicate that higher endorsement in FC questions cannot only be explained by question format. Other possible causes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respondent incentives are a popular instrument to achieve higher response rates in surveys. However, the use of incentives is still a controversial topic in the methodological literature with regard to the possible reduction or increase in response quality. We conducted an experiment in a large-scale German face-to-face study in which the treatment group was promised a modest monetary incentive. We used different indicators of response quality and compared the incentivized group with the control group. Our results indicate that in general there are no systematic differences between the incentivized and the control group concerning response quality. We found some hints that specific subgroups react differently to incentives in terms of response behavior. While response quality usually tends to be lower for older respondents, we found that in the incentivized group the response quality is higher for older respondents as compared to younger ones regarding the level of item nonresponse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recording interviews is a key feature of quality control protocols for most survey organizations. We examine the effects on interview length and data quality of a new protocol adopted by a national panel study. The protocol recorded a randomly chosen one-third of all interviews digitally, although all respondents were asked for permission to record their interview and interviewers were blind as to whether or not interviews were recorded. We find that the recording software slowed the interview slightly. Interviewer knowledge that the interview may be recorded improved data quality, but this knowledge also increased the length of the interview. Interviewers with higher education and performance ratings were less reactive to the new recording protocol. Survey managers may face a trade-off between higher data quality and longer interviews when determining recording protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on respondents as the source of measurement error, regardless of the question being asked, interviewer effects, or other factors that influence survey quality. Some individuals simply provide poorer answers as a result of a behavior called satisficing. An especially troublesome case is that of sensitive questions, where misreporting is common. In the study reported here, a significant role was found for individual-level time consistency as a predictor for answers to sensitive questions related to children, sex, condoms, and HIV. Couples’ reports, where couple-level fixed effects (including the “true” answer) can be ruled out, confirm this result. Satisficing may have more of an impact on how individuals respond to sensitive questions than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of probing techniques in web surveys to identify validity problems of items. Conventional cognitive interviewing is usually based on small sample sizes and thus precludes quantifying the findings in a meaningful way or testing small or special subpopulations characterized by their response behavior. This article investigates probing in web surveys as a supplementary way to look at item validity. Data come from a web survey in which respondents were asked to give reasons for selecting a response category for a closed question. The web study was conducted in Germany, with respondents drawn from online panels (n = 1,023). The usefulness of the proposed approach is shown by revealing validity problems with a gender ideology item. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cognitive interviewing (CI) is a pretesting technique that elicits respondents’ interpretations of survey questions as a means to evaluate and revise them. Vignettes are sometimes used as a part of the cognitive testing method. There has been little research on using vignettes in the testing of survey translations. This article examines the use of vignettes in two Spanish and English pretesting projects at the U.S. Census Bureau. The authors examine findings across English and Spanish cases in the two studies and discuss areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of native and nonnative language interviews, this article argues that being a nonnative interviewer, in a weaker position, makes it easier to elicit information from native interviewees. One reason for this is that the interviewer is obliged to let interviewees define their concepts, deferring to their position as a language authority and recognizing one aspect of the power relationship. Power in ethnographic interviewing is always negotiated, and this article demonstrates how the spoken languages of interviewer and interviewee affects ethnographic interviews and power dynamics in dialogs. Some useful discourse strategies for native and nonnative language ethnographic interviewers are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors analyze interviewer-related nonresponse differences in face-to-face surveys, distinguishing three types of interviewers: those who have previous experience with the same high standard cross-sectional survey (‘‘experienced’’), those who were chosen by the survey agency to complete refusal conversions (‘‘seniors’’), and usual interviewers. The nonresponse components are obtaining household contact, target person contact, and target person cooperation. In addition, the authors consider whether interviewer homogeneity with respect to these components is different across the three interviewer groups. Data come from the European Social Survey (ESS) contact forms from four countries that participated in the rounds of 2002, 2004, and 2006 and used the same survey agency that, in turn, used the same interviewers to some extent. To analyze interviewer effects, the authors use discrete two-level models. The authors find some evidence of better performance by both senior and experienced interviewers and indications of greater homogeneity for nonresponse components, especially for those with room for improvement. Surprisingly, the senior interviewers do not outperform the experienced ones. The authors conclude that survey agencies should make more efforts to decrease the comparatively high interviewer turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes three techniques for combining a Q method analysis with a traditional survey. Q method is an effective way of identifying the various shared perspectives that people may hold about a given topic. The ability to measure those viewpoints in a later survey would allow the researcher to generalize the findings to a larger population and to construct explanations in which respondents' adherence to those perspectives is related to other variables. "Scale creation" involves presenting distinctive Q statements as Likert items that can be used to construct a traditional psychometric scale to measure each perspective. "Profile correlation" involves correlating respondents' overall pattern of responses with prototypes representing the perspectives. Finally, "narrative evaluation" asks the respondent to give his or her opinion about a narrative description of each perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of expert respondent debriefings to evaluate the quality of survey data. In this case study, subject matter experts observed 169 interviews and conducted qualitative respondent debriefings on select cases in a field test of a census coverage survey. By comparing "true" residence status for each person as determined by the debriefing against the residence status obtained by the questionnaire alone, the authors determined whether the questionnaire was collecting accurate information. For the 473 people for whom survey data was available, the questionnaire failed only five times to assign the correct residence status code in a way that would have detrimentally affected coverage estimates. The respondent debriefing technique helped pinpoint specific problems in the questionnaire, as well as confirm that the questionnaire performed adequately in most cases. This article describes the expert respondent debriefing methodology that was used in a face-to-face interview setting and discusses how it could be adapted to telephone interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonresponse rates in household surveys in the Netherlands are high. As low response rates are generally assumed to increase nonresponse bias, doubts have arisen concerning the value of survey research. The costs of fieldwork have substantially increased in recent years and will increase even more to compensate for the unfavorable response trends. This article describes a survey in which high response rates were attained and which measures were taken to achieve this. It also studies the differences between respondents who are hard to reach and those who are reluctant to participate in a survey. Additional data from a follow-up survey among refusers cast doubt on the assumption that reluctant respondents are similar to refusers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]