The Essential Role Of Language In Survey Research

The essential role of language in survey research

Language users, such as survey respondents and interviewers, must speak the same language literally and figuratively to interact with each other. As diversity grows in the United States and globally, interviewers and respondents may speak a different language or speak the same language differently that reflects their own cultural norms of communication. This book discusses the role of language in survey research when comparisons across groups, cultures, and countries are of interest. Language use in surveys is dynamic, including words, symbols (e.g., arrows), and even emojis. The entire survey life cycle is carried out through language. Researchers write or translate questions and instructions that will address research questions and then pretest them using various techniques, including qualitative inquiry that focuses on context beyond just “the numbers.” Human or virtual data collectors use persuasive messages to communicate with survey respondents and encourage their survey participation. Respondents must comprehend and interpret survey questions and instructions to provide a response. All of these survey processes and products contribute to data quality, and the role of language is essential. Praise for The Essential Role of Language in Survey Research “This book highlights the importance of language issues for data quality, provides frameworks for conceptualizing the underlying processes, presents diverse methods for identifying problems at an early stage, and illustratesand evaluates potential solutions in the form of improved translation and pretesting procedures.” --Daphna Oyserman and Norbert Schwarz, University of Southern California “The role of language and issues of language are particularly salient for multinational, multiregional, or multicultural (3MC) comparative surveys that are designed to collect data and compare findings from two or more populations. This book highlights the critical need to consider a range ofissues pertaining to language at various aspects and stages of 3MC survey design and implementation.” --Julie de Jong, Kristen Cibelli Hibben, and Jennifer Kelley, University of Michigan, and Dorothée Behr, GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany “The need to reach increasingly diverse target populations requires survey researchers to be ever more aware of the role of verbal and nonverbal language in the survey research process. This book provides a great resource for readers new to the subject, as well as experts, seeking to understand the implications of language for survey design, implementation, and resulting data quality.” --Antje Kirchner, RTI International, and Coeditor of Big Data Meets Survey Science: A Collection of Innovative Methods “Covering a range of topics fundamental to high-quality surveys in cross-cultural contexts, this new volume features ‘language’ in its varied roles within survey methodology and practice, including questionnaire design, translation, and fieldwork implementation for quantitative and qualitative research. The Essential Role of Language in Survey Research uses in-country examples and analyses from across the globe to underscore specific challenges that survey researchers confront in their work.” --Patrick Moynihan and Martha McRoy, Pew Research Center

The Essential Role of Language in Survey Research

A Practical Guide to Survey Questionnaire Design and Evaluation

A Practical Guide to Survey Questionnaire Design and Evaluation summarizes principles, guidelines, and best practices for developing and testing survey questionnaires driven and supported by theoretical and empirical research. It provides a broad overview of literature on questionnaire design, drawing on both theoretical and empirical research. This book consists of three parts. The first covers the survey response process model, which will serve as the theoretical framework to establish the basic principles of writing different types of survey questions (attitudinal, behavioral, demographic, and knowledge). The second part of this book focuses on special topics such as sensitive questions, developing questionnaires for older adults and children, designing a paper survey, designing a web survey and optimizing for a mobile device, developing questionnaires for a multimode survey, and conducting surveys in multiple languages and cultures. The third part of this book describes methods for testing and evaluating survey questions. Topics cover focus groups, cognitive interviewing, expert review, Questionnaire Appraisal System, behavior coding, respondent and interviewer debriefing, randomized experiments, and pilot studies. Given extensive web survey coverage, we also discuss usability testing of web surveys. Finally, we present a brief overview of the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for questionnaire development and evaluation. Suggestions for further reading, case studies, and discussion questions are included in all chapters. This book will be of interest to those using survey methodology/questionnaires and graduate courses incorporating survey design across the social and behavioral sciences, including psychology, communication studies, nursing and healthcare research, sociology, anthropology, and education.