Jolene D Smyth
Biographic Data
| ID | 77610 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jolene D Smyth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jolene D |
| FAMILY NAME | Smyth |
| SIGNATURE | SMYTH J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8905-8804 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 227 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Urban-Rural Digital Divide in Internet Access and Online Activities During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly shifted traditionally in-person interactions to online. Because rural residents historically have lower rates of broadband internet access, they may have been less likely to conduct activities online than their urban counterparts, reflecting geographic digital inequalities. We examine whether residents of rural areas are less likely than residents of urban areas to have internet access, conduct various activities onl…
“Are You …”: An Examination of Incomplete Question Stems in Self-administered Surveys
Questionnaire designers are encouraged to write questions as complete sentences. In self-administered surveys, incomplete question stems may reduce visual clutter but may also increase burden when respondents need to scan the response options to fully complete the question. We experimentally examine the effects of three categories of incomplete question stems (incomplete conversational, incomplete ordinal, and incomplete nominal questions) versus…
Comparing Readability Measures and Computer-assisted Question Evaluation Tools for Self-administered Survey Questions
Questionnaire designers use readability measures to ensure that questions can be understood by the target population. The most common measure is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level, but other formulas exist. This article compares six different readability measures across 150 questions in a self-administered questionnaire, finding notable variation in calculated readability across measures. Some question formats, including those that are part of a batt…
Interviewer Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective
Interviewer Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective presents a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art research on interviewer-administered survey data collection. Interviewers play an essential role in the collection of the high-quality survey data used to learn about our society and improve the human condition. Although many surveys are conducted using self-administered modes, interviewer-administered modes continue to be optimal for…
The effect of emphasis in telephone survey questions on survey measurement quality
Questionnaire design texts commonly recommend emphasizing important words, including capitalization or underlining, to promote their processing by the respondent. In self-administered surveys, respondents can see the emphasis, but in an interviewer-administered survey, emphasis has to be communicated to respondents through audible signals. We report the results of experiments in two US telephone surveys in which telephone survey questions were pr…
Effects of Stem and Response Order on Response Patterns in Satisfaction Ratings
Considerable research has examined the effect of response option order in ordinal bipolar questions such as satisfaction questions. However, no research we know of has examined the effect of the order of presentation of concepts in the question stem or whether stem order moderates response option order. In this article, we experimentally test the main and interaction effects of both stem and response option order for items in self-administered su…
How Well Do Interviewers Record Responses to Numeric, Interviewer Field-code, and Open-ended Narrative Questions in Telephone Surveys
Telephone survey interviewers need to be able to accurately record answers to questions. While straightforward for closed questions, this task can be complicated for open questions. We examine interviewer recording accuracy rates from a national landline random digit dial telephone survey. We find that accuracy rates are over 90% for numeric response and interviewer-code, single-response items but are astonishingly low (49%) for a multiple-answer…
Drawing on LGB Identity to Encourage Participation and Disclosure of Sexual Orientation in Surveys
This paper reports an experiment that tested how three survey cover designs – images of traditional families and individuals displaying themselves in typical gender ways; images of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals and families; and no cover images – affected LGB people’s participation and disclosure of LGB identity and non-LGB people’s participation. Analyses showed the LGB-inclusive cover led to significantly more LG…
Item Location, the Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, and Responses to Battery Questions in Telephone Surveys
Survey researchers often ask a series of attitudinal questions with a common question stem and response options, known as battery questions. Interviewers have substantial latitude in deciding how to administer these items, including whether to reread the common question stem on items after the first one or to probe respondents’ answers. Despite the ubiquity of use of these items, there is virtually no research on whether respondent and interviewe…
Why Do Cell Phone Interviews Last Longer? A Behavior Coding Perspective
Why do telephone interviews last longer on cell phones than landline phones? Common explanations for this phenomenon include differential selection into subsets of questions, activities outside the question-answer sequence (such as collecting contact information for cell-minute reimbursement), respondent characteristics, behaviors indicating disruption to respondents’ perception and comprehension, and behaviors indicating interviewer reactions to…
A Comparison of Full and Quasi Filters for Autobiographical Questions
Some survey questions do not apply to all respondents. How to design these questions for both eligible and ineligible respondents is unclear. This article compares full filter (FF) and quasi filter (QF) designs for autobiographical questions in mail surveys. Using data from National Health, Well-being, and Perspectives Study, we examine the effect of type of filter on item nonresponse rates, response errors, and response distributions. We find th…
Women's Work? The Relationship between Farmwork and Gender Self-Perception
Women have long been involved in agricultural production, yet farming and ranching have been associated with masculinity and men. In recent years women have become more involved and more likely to take active and equal roles on farms and ranches and thus increasingly are doing tasks that have been associated with masculinity. Prior work indicates that women are perceived by others as more masculine when they do these tasks, but less work has focu…
Within-Household Selection in Mail Surveys
Randomly selecting a single adult within a household is one of the biggest challenges facing mail surveys. Yet obtaining a probability sample of adults within households is critical to having a probability sample of the US adult population. In this paper, we experimentally test three alternative placements of the within-household selection instructions in the National Health, Wellbeing, and Perspectives study (sample n = 6,000; respondent n = 998…
Do Interviewer Postsurvey Evaluations of Respondents’ Engagement Measure Who Respondents Are or What They Do? A Behavior Coding Study
Survey interviewers are often tasked with assessing the quality of respondents’ answers after completing a survey interview. These interviewer observations have been used to proxy for measurement error in interviewer-administered surveys. How interviewers formulate these evaluations and how well they proxy for measurement error has received little empirical attention. According to dual-process theories of impression formation, individuals form im…
Effects of Smiley Face Scales on Visual Processing of Satisfaction Questions in Web Surveys
Web surveys permit researchers to use graphic or symbolic elements alongside the text of response options to help respondents process the categories. Smiley faces are one example used to communicate positive and negative domains. How respondents visually process these smiley faces, including whether they detract from the question’s text, is understudied. We report the results of two eye-tracking experiments in which satisfaction questions were as…
Using a Calendar and Explanatory Instructions to Aid Within-household Selection in Mail Surveys
Although researchers can easily select probability samples of addresses using the U.S. Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File, randomly selecting respondents within households for surveys remains challenging. Researchers often place within-household selection instructions, such as the next or last birthday methods, in survey cover letters to select respondents. Studies show that up to 30% of selections are inaccurate and samples tend not to repr…
Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed‐Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method
An Experimental Test of the Effects of Survey Sponsorship on Internet and Mail Survey Response
Survey researchers have typically assumed that university sponsorship consistently increases response rates and reduces nonresponse error across different populations, but they have not tested the effects of utilizing different university sponsors to collect data from the same population. In addition, scholars have not examined how these effects differ for mixed-mode (web and mail) or mail-only data collection. To explore these questions, we cond…
Assessing Within-Household Selection Methods in Household Mail Surveys
Household surveys are increasingly moving toward self-administered modes of data collection. To maintain a probability sample of the population, researchers must use probability methods to select adults within households. However, very little experimental methodological work has been conducted on within-household selection in mail surveys. In this study, we experimentally examine four methods—the next-birthday method, the last-birthday method, se…
Accuracy of Within-household Selection in Web and Mail Surveys of the General Population
Household surveys are moving from interviewer-administered modes to self-administered modes for data collection, but many households do not accurately follow within-household selection procedures in mail surveys. In this article, we examine accuracy of within-household selection using an oldest adult/youngest adult method in web, mail, and mixed-mode surveys. The frame for this study comes from a telephone survey conducted with Nebraska residents…
Identifying predictors of survey mode preference
Context effects in Internet surveys
This article first presents a definition of context effects that eliminates from consideration factors beyond the control of survey researchers yet is sufficiently broad to incorporate diverse but related sources of survey context. It then examines four types of context effects that have been documented in mail and telephone surveys with an eye towards identifying new concerns which have arisen or may arise as a result of conducting Internet surv…
Does Giving People Their Preferred Survey Mode Actually Increase Survey Participation Rates? An Experimental Examination
Survey research has long grappled with the concept of survey mode preference: the idea that a respondent may prefer to participate in one survey mode over another. This article experimentally examines the effect of mode preference on response, contact, and cooperation rates; mode choice; and data collection efficiency. Respondents to a 2008 telephone survey (n = 1,811; AAPOR RR3 = 38 percent) were asked their mode preference for future survey par…
The Effects of Item Saliency and Question Design on Measurement Error in a Self-Administered Survey
Recent survey design research has shown that small changes in the structure and visual layout of questions can affect respondents' answers, but the results are not always consistent across studies. One possible reason for some of the inconsistency may be differences in the item saliency of the questions used in the experiments. In this article, the authors examine how item saliency might influence visual design effects. The authors report the res…
The self-assessed literacy index: Reliability and validity
Open-Ended Questions in Web Surveys
Previous research has revealed techniques to improve response quality in open-ended questions in both paper and interviewer-administered survey modes. The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of similar techniques in web surveys. Using data from a series of three random sample web surveys of Washington State University undergraduates, we examine the effects of visual and verbal answer-box manipulations (i.e., altering the size of th…
Comparing Check-All and Forced-Choice Question Formats in Web Surveys
For survey researchers, it is common practice to use the check-all question format in Web and mail surveys but to convert to the forced-choice question format in telephone surveys. The assumption underlying this practice is that respondents will answer the two formats similarly. In this research note we report results from 16 experimental comparisons in two Web surveys and a paper survey conducted in 2002 and 2003 that test whether the check-all …
Helping Respondents Get It Right the First Time: The Influence of Words, Symbols, and Graphics in Web Surveys
We utilize and apply visual design theory to experimentally test ways to improve the likelihood that web respondents report date answers in a particular format desired by the researcher, thus reducing possible deleterious effects of error messages or requests for corrections. These experiments were embedded in a series of web surveys of random samples of university students. We seek to examine the sequential and cumulative effects of visually man…
Does Giving People Their Preferred Survey Mode Actually Increase Survey Participation Rates? An Experimental Examination
Survey research has long grappled with the concept of survey mode preference: the idea that a respondent may prefer to participate in one survey mode over another. This article experimentally examines the effect of mode preference on response, contact, and cooperation rates; mode choice; and data collection efficiency. Respondents to a 2008 telephone survey (n = 1,811; AAPOR RR3 = 38 percent) were asked their mode preference for future survey par…
An Experimental Test of the Effects of Survey Sponsorship on Internet and Mail Survey Response
Survey researchers have typically assumed that university sponsorship consistently increases response rates and reduces nonresponse error across different populations, but they have not tested the effects of utilizing different university sponsors to collect data from the same population. In addition, scholars have not examined how these effects differ for mixed-mode (web and mail) or mail-only data collection. To explore these questions, we cond…
Using the Internet to Survey Small Towns and Communities: Limitations and Possibilities in the Early 21st Century
Researchers who are interested in small towns and rural communities in the United States often find that they need to conduct their own sample surveys because many large national surveys, such as the American Community Survey, do not collect enough representative responses to make precise estimates. In collecting their own survey data, researchers face a number of challenges, such as sampling and coverage limitations. This article summarizes thos…
Does "Yes or No" on the Telephone Mean the Same as "Check-All-That-Apply" on the Web
Recent experimental research has shown that respondents to forced-choice questions endorse significantly more options than respondents to check-all questions. This research has challenged the common assumption that these two question formats can be used interchangeably but has been limited to comparisons within a single survey mode. In this paper we use data from a 2004 random sample survey of university students to compare the forced-choice and …
Women's Work? The Relationship between Farmwork and Gender Self-Perception
Women have long been involved in agricultural production, yet farming and ranching have been associated with masculinity and men. In recent years women have become more involved and more likely to take active and equal roles on farms and ranches and thus increasingly are doing tasks that have been associated with masculinity. Prior work indicates that women are perceived by others as more masculine when they do these tasks, but less work has focu…
Assessing Within-Household Selection Methods in Household Mail Surveys
Household surveys are increasingly moving toward self-administered modes of data collection. To maintain a probability sample of the population, researchers must use probability methods to select adults within households. However, very little experimental methodological work has been conducted on within-household selection in mail surveys. In this study, we experimentally examine four methods—the next-birthday method, the last-birthday method, se…
Accuracy of Within-household Selection in Web and Mail Surveys of the General Population
Household surveys are moving from interviewer-administered modes to self-administered modes for data collection, but many households do not accurately follow within-household selection procedures in mail surveys. In this article, we examine accuracy of within-household selection using an oldest adult/youngest adult method in web, mail, and mixed-mode surveys. The frame for this study comes from a telephone survey conducted with Nebraska residents…
Do Interviewer Postsurvey Evaluations of Respondents’ Engagement Measure Who Respondents Are or What They Do? A Behavior Coding Study
Survey interviewers are often tasked with assessing the quality of respondents’ answers after completing a survey interview. These interviewer observations have been used to proxy for measurement error in interviewer-administered surveys. How interviewers formulate these evaluations and how well they proxy for measurement error has received little empirical attention. According to dual-process theories of impression formation, individuals form im…
Identifying predictors of survey mode preference
Within-Household Selection in Mail Surveys
Randomly selecting a single adult within a household is one of the biggest challenges facing mail surveys. Yet obtaining a probability sample of adults within households is critical to having a probability sample of the US adult population. In this paper, we experimentally test three alternative placements of the within-household selection instructions in the National Health, Wellbeing, and Perspectives study (sample n = 6,000; respondent n = 998…
Effects of Smiley Face Scales on Visual Processing of Satisfaction Questions in Web Surveys
Web surveys permit researchers to use graphic or symbolic elements alongside the text of response options to help respondents process the categories. Smiley faces are one example used to communicate positive and negative domains. How respondents visually process these smiley faces, including whether they detract from the question’s text, is understudied. We report the results of two eye-tracking experiments in which satisfaction questions were as…
Effects of Stem and Response Order on Response Patterns in Satisfaction Ratings
Considerable research has examined the effect of response option order in ordinal bipolar questions such as satisfaction questions. However, no research we know of has examined the effect of the order of presentation of concepts in the question stem or whether stem order moderates response option order. In this article, we experimentally test the main and interaction effects of both stem and response option order for items in self-administered su…
The Effects of Item Saliency and Question Design on Measurement Error in a Self-Administered Survey
Recent survey design research has shown that small changes in the structure and visual layout of questions can affect respondents' answers, but the results are not always consistent across studies. One possible reason for some of the inconsistency may be differences in the item saliency of the questions used in the experiments. In this article, the authors examine how item saliency might influence visual design effects. The authors report the res…
Using a Calendar and Explanatory Instructions to Aid Within-household Selection in Mail Surveys
Although researchers can easily select probability samples of addresses using the U.S. Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File, randomly selecting respondents within households for surveys remains challenging. Researchers often place within-household selection instructions, such as the next or last birthday methods, in survey cover letters to select respondents. Studies show that up to 30% of selections are inaccurate and samples tend not to repr…
The self-assessed literacy index: Reliability and validity
How Well Do Interviewers Record Responses to Numeric, Interviewer Field-code, and Open-ended Narrative Questions in Telephone Surveys
Telephone survey interviewers need to be able to accurately record answers to questions. While straightforward for closed questions, this task can be complicated for open questions. We examine interviewer recording accuracy rates from a national landline random digit dial telephone survey. We find that accuracy rates are over 90% for numeric response and interviewer-code, single-response items but are astonishingly low (49%) for a multiple-answer…
Item Location, the Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, and Responses to Battery Questions in Telephone Surveys
Survey researchers often ask a series of attitudinal questions with a common question stem and response options, known as battery questions. Interviewers have substantial latitude in deciding how to administer these items, including whether to reread the common question stem on items after the first one or to probe respondents’ answers. Despite the ubiquity of use of these items, there is virtually no research on whether respondent and interviewe…
Why Do Cell Phone Interviews Last Longer? A Behavior Coding Perspective
Why do telephone interviews last longer on cell phones than landline phones? Common explanations for this phenomenon include differential selection into subsets of questions, activities outside the question-answer sequence (such as collecting contact information for cell-minute reimbursement), respondent characteristics, behaviors indicating disruption to respondents’ perception and comprehension, and behaviors indicating interviewer reactions to…
A Comparison of Full and Quasi Filters for Autobiographical Questions
Some survey questions do not apply to all respondents. How to design these questions for both eligible and ineligible respondents is unclear. This article compares full filter (FF) and quasi filter (QF) designs for autobiographical questions in mail surveys. Using data from National Health, Well-being, and Perspectives Study, we examine the effect of type of filter on item nonresponse rates, response errors, and response distributions. We find th…
Comparing Check-All and Forced-Choice Question Formats in Web Surveys
For survey researchers, it is common practice to use the check-all question format in Web and mail surveys but to convert to the forced-choice question format in telephone surveys. The assumption underlying this practice is that respondents will answer the two formats similarly. In this research note we report results from 16 experimental comparisons in two Web surveys and a paper survey conducted in 2002 and 2003 that test whether the check-all …
Helping Respondents Get It Right the First Time: The Influence of Words, Symbols, and Graphics in Web Surveys
We utilize and apply visual design theory to experimentally test ways to improve the likelihood that web respondents report date answers in a particular format desired by the researcher, thus reducing possible deleterious effects of error messages or requests for corrections. These experiments were embedded in a series of web surveys of random samples of university students. We seek to examine the sequential and cumulative effects of visually man…
Does "Yes or No" on the Telephone Mean the Same as "Check-All-That-Apply" on the Web
Recent experimental research has shown that respondents to forced-choice questions endorse significantly more options than respondents to check-all questions. This research has challenged the common assumption that these two question formats can be used interchangeably but has been limited to comparisons within a single survey mode. In this paper we use data from a 2004 random sample survey of university students to compare the forced-choice and …
Open-Ended Questions in Web Surveys
Previous research has revealed techniques to improve response quality in open-ended questions in both paper and interviewer-administered survey modes. The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of similar techniques in web surveys. Using data from a series of three random sample web surveys of Washington State University undergraduates, we examine the effects of visual and verbal answer-box manipulations (i.e., altering the size of th…
Using the Internet to Survey Small Towns and Communities: Limitations and Possibilities in the Early 21st Century
Researchers who are interested in small towns and rural communities in the United States often find that they need to conduct their own sample surveys because many large national surveys, such as the American Community Survey, do not collect enough representative responses to make precise estimates. In collecting their own survey data, researchers face a number of challenges, such as sampling and coverage limitations. This article summarizes thos…
The self-assessed literacy index: Reliability and validity
Context effects in Internet surveys
This article first presents a definition of context effects that eliminates from consideration factors beyond the control of survey researchers yet is sufficiently broad to incorporate diverse but related sources of survey context. It then examines four types of context effects that have been documented in mail and telephone surveys with an eye towards identifying new concerns which have arisen or may arise as a result of conducting Internet surv…
Does Giving People Their Preferred Survey Mode Actually Increase Survey Participation Rates? An Experimental Examination
Survey research has long grappled with the concept of survey mode preference: the idea that a respondent may prefer to participate in one survey mode over another. This article experimentally examines the effect of mode preference on response, contact, and cooperation rates; mode choice; and data collection efficiency. Respondents to a 2008 telephone survey (n = 1,811; AAPOR RR3 = 38 percent) were asked their mode preference for future survey par…
The Effects of Item Saliency and Question Design on Measurement Error in a Self-Administered Survey
Recent survey design research has shown that small changes in the structure and visual layout of questions can affect respondents' answers, but the results are not always consistent across studies. One possible reason for some of the inconsistency may be differences in the item saliency of the questions used in the experiments. In this article, the authors examine how item saliency might influence visual design effects. The authors report the res…
Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed‐Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method
An Experimental Test of the Effects of Survey Sponsorship on Internet and Mail Survey Response
Survey researchers have typically assumed that university sponsorship consistently increases response rates and reduces nonresponse error across different populations, but they have not tested the effects of utilizing different university sponsors to collect data from the same population. In addition, scholars have not examined how these effects differ for mixed-mode (web and mail) or mail-only data collection. To explore these questions, we cond…
Assessing Within-Household Selection Methods in Household Mail Surveys
Household surveys are increasingly moving toward self-administered modes of data collection. To maintain a probability sample of the population, researchers must use probability methods to select adults within households. However, very little experimental methodological work has been conducted on within-household selection in mail surveys. In this study, we experimentally examine four methods—the next-birthday method, the last-birthday method, se…
Accuracy of Within-household Selection in Web and Mail Surveys of the General Population
Household surveys are moving from interviewer-administered modes to self-administered modes for data collection, but many households do not accurately follow within-household selection procedures in mail surveys. In this article, we examine accuracy of within-household selection using an oldest adult/youngest adult method in web, mail, and mixed-mode surveys. The frame for this study comes from a telephone survey conducted with Nebraska residents…
Identifying predictors of survey mode preference
Effects of Smiley Face Scales on Visual Processing of Satisfaction Questions in Web Surveys
Web surveys permit researchers to use graphic or symbolic elements alongside the text of response options to help respondents process the categories. Smiley faces are one example used to communicate positive and negative domains. How respondents visually process these smiley faces, including whether they detract from the question’s text, is understudied. We report the results of two eye-tracking experiments in which satisfaction questions were as…
Using a Calendar and Explanatory Instructions to Aid Within-household Selection in Mail Surveys
Although researchers can easily select probability samples of addresses using the U.S. Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File, randomly selecting respondents within households for surveys remains challenging. Researchers often place within-household selection instructions, such as the next or last birthday methods, in survey cover letters to select respondents. Studies show that up to 30% of selections are inaccurate and samples tend not to repr…
Within-Household Selection in Mail Surveys
Randomly selecting a single adult within a household is one of the biggest challenges facing mail surveys. Yet obtaining a probability sample of adults within households is critical to having a probability sample of the US adult population. In this paper, we experimentally test three alternative placements of the within-household selection instructions in the National Health, Wellbeing, and Perspectives study (sample n = 6,000; respondent n = 998…
Do Interviewer Postsurvey Evaluations of Respondents’ Engagement Measure Who Respondents Are or What They Do? A Behavior Coding Study
Survey interviewers are often tasked with assessing the quality of respondents’ answers after completing a survey interview. These interviewer observations have been used to proxy for measurement error in interviewer-administered surveys. How interviewers formulate these evaluations and how well they proxy for measurement error has received little empirical attention. According to dual-process theories of impression formation, individuals form im…
Item Location, the Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, and Responses to Battery Questions in Telephone Surveys
Survey researchers often ask a series of attitudinal questions with a common question stem and response options, known as battery questions. Interviewers have substantial latitude in deciding how to administer these items, including whether to reread the common question stem on items after the first one or to probe respondents’ answers. Despite the ubiquity of use of these items, there is virtually no research on whether respondent and interviewe…
Why Do Cell Phone Interviews Last Longer? A Behavior Coding Perspective
Why do telephone interviews last longer on cell phones than landline phones? Common explanations for this phenomenon include differential selection into subsets of questions, activities outside the question-answer sequence (such as collecting contact information for cell-minute reimbursement), respondent characteristics, behaviors indicating disruption to respondents’ perception and comprehension, and behaviors indicating interviewer reactions to…
A Comparison of Full and Quasi Filters for Autobiographical Questions
Some survey questions do not apply to all respondents. How to design these questions for both eligible and ineligible respondents is unclear. This article compares full filter (FF) and quasi filter (QF) designs for autobiographical questions in mail surveys. Using data from National Health, Well-being, and Perspectives Study, we examine the effect of type of filter on item nonresponse rates, response errors, and response distributions. We find th…
Women's Work? The Relationship between Farmwork and Gender Self-Perception
Women have long been involved in agricultural production, yet farming and ranching have been associated with masculinity and men. In recent years women have become more involved and more likely to take active and equal roles on farms and ranches and thus increasingly are doing tasks that have been associated with masculinity. Prior work indicates that women are perceived by others as more masculine when they do these tasks, but less work has focu…
Effects of Stem and Response Order on Response Patterns in Satisfaction Ratings
Considerable research has examined the effect of response option order in ordinal bipolar questions such as satisfaction questions. However, no research we know of has examined the effect of the order of presentation of concepts in the question stem or whether stem order moderates response option order. In this article, we experimentally test the main and interaction effects of both stem and response option order for items in self-administered su…
How Well Do Interviewers Record Responses to Numeric, Interviewer Field-code, and Open-ended Narrative Questions in Telephone Surveys
Telephone survey interviewers need to be able to accurately record answers to questions. While straightforward for closed questions, this task can be complicated for open questions. We examine interviewer recording accuracy rates from a national landline random digit dial telephone survey. We find that accuracy rates are over 90% for numeric response and interviewer-code, single-response items but are astonishingly low (49%) for a multiple-answer…
Drawing on LGB Identity to Encourage Participation and Disclosure of Sexual Orientation in Surveys
This paper reports an experiment that tested how three survey cover designs – images of traditional families and individuals displaying themselves in typical gender ways; images of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals and families; and no cover images – affected LGB people’s participation and disclosure of LGB identity and non-LGB people’s participation. Analyses showed the LGB-inclusive cover led to significantly more LG…
Survey Methodology and Nonresponse (27 works) · Psychology (26 works) · Computer Science (24 works) · Mathematics (15 works) · Statistics (15 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · World Wide Web (10 works) · Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods (9 works) · Interview (9 works)