Chapter 9: The Respondent as a Source of Survey Measurement Error

 

-          Theories of cognitive psychology

 

Components of Response Formation Process

-          Encoding of information

-          Comprehension

-          Retrieval

-          Judgment of appropriate answer

-          Communication

 

Encoding Process

-          Process of forming memories or retaining knowledge à encoding process

-          Organisation of memory

-          Scripts

-          Respondent rules effects

-          Non attitudes

 

Comprehension of survey question

 

Retrieval of Information from Memory

-          Recall step

o   Nature of connections established during encoding

o   Differences in number / timing of rehearsals

o   Nature of cues to aid retrieval

o   Order in which elements / sets are recalled.

-          Length of recall period

-          Saliency of events to be recalled

-          Task difficulty

-          Respondent attention or motivation

-          Judgment of appropriate answer

o   Heuristics

 

Communication of response

-          Social desirability effects

-          Marlowe – Crowne scale

-          Acquiescence / yea saying / nay saying response tendencies

 

Sociological & Demographic Correlates of Respondent Error

-          Age

-          Educational differences

 

Summary

 

-          Difficult to separate respondent and interviewer effects]

-          Cost à increase length of questionnaire to enrich the cueing in memory retrieval.

-          Decrease respondent error

-          Increased probing