What are some of the differences between everyday conversations and standardized surveys? How does ‘asking clear and meaningful questions’ fit in?
What will be an ideal response?
All hope for achieving measurement validity is lost unless survey questions are clear and convey the intended meaning to respondents. Even if you pose questions all the time and have no trouble understanding the responses you receive, this does not mean that clear and meaningful survey questions would not present a challenge. Consider just a few of the differences between everyday conversations and standardized surveys: Survey questions must be asked of many people, not just one person.
• The same survey questions must be used with each person, not tailored to the specifics of a given conversation.
• Survey questions must be understood in the same way by people who differ in many ways.
• You will not be able to rephrase a survey question if someone does not understand it because that would result in asking the person a different question from the one you asked the others in your sample.
• Survey respondents do not know you and so cannot be expected to share the nuances of expression that you and those close to you use to communicate.
These features make a survey very different from natural conversation and make question writing a challenging and important task for survey researchers.
Questions must be very clear and specific about what is being asked of respondents. Note the differences in specificity between the rape screening questions used by the NISVS and the NCVS displayed in Exhibits 7.1 and 7.2. It is logical that the multiple behaviorally specific questions from the NISVS will be associated with greater disclosure by survey respondents compared to the one question about sexual intercourse posed by the NCVS. Research has shown that questions that are written with more behavior-specific language, such as those used by the NISVS, result in much better recall by respondents of these types of victimizations compared to the questions used by the NCVS (Bachman, 2012; Fisher, 2009).
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The use of electronic monitoring devices to track an offender's whereabouts is known as:
a. bugging. b. wiretapping. c. trailing. d. tagging.
According to Kohlberg’s model, what is the highest level can women achieve because they are focused on others?
a. first b. second c. third d. fourth
A mistake of fact can be a defense if it
a. negates the mens rea b. is an act or omission c. is unreasonable d. breaks the chain of causation
What statement is true about electronic monitoring?
a. The costs are higher than incarceration. b. Institutional overcrowding is reduced. c. Passive monitoring systems consist of a radio transmitter worn by the offender that sends a continuous signal to the probation department computer. d. Active monitoring uses computer-generate random phone calls that must be answered in a certain period of time.