Wil Dijkstra

Using Social Desirability Scales in Research among the Elderly

A consistent finding is that elderly people obtain higher scores on social desirability (SD) scales than younger ones. It is usually assumed that elderly people are more eager to present themselves in a favourable way. Hence, especially in survey-research among the elderly, it is common practice to include SD-scales to correct for spurious relationships. In this article it is argued that the assumptions underlying such practice are doubtful, because SD-scores may be affected by a variety of factors but the tendency to present oneself favourably. Two such factors related to the question-answering process are discussed in more detail. Empirical support is provided that these factors may explain the relationship between the score on a SD-scale and age. It is argued that using SD-scales to correct for relationships between variables, may lead to erroneous results.

Retrospective questions: data quality, task difficulty, and the use of a checklist

Data from a national panel study with waves in 1987 and 1991 (N=1257), present evidence of the low accuracy of responses to retrospective questions, concerning both attitudes and behaviour. Applying a split ballot design, it is investigated whether using a checklist improves the response accuracy for a retrospective question about one single event: how respondents (N=363) did obtain the job they had four years ago. Furthermore interaction effects of ‘task difficulty’ are examined.The response accuracy indeed increases by using a checklist; however, this increase is not statistically significant. The expected increase of the checklist effect with higher ‘task difficulty’ appears for longer recall intervals, but not for more frequent changes of jobs.It turned out that for male respondents all the predicted effects are indeed clearly present. But for female respondents the checklist appeared to have no effect, irrespective of the task difficulty. A tentative explanation for this unexpected gender effect is suggested by pointing at indications that the male and female respondents differed in the way they obtained their job.

Computers/Ordinateurs Sequence - a Program for Analysing Sequential Data

The SEQUENCE program offers a wide range of procedures for the analysis of sequential data. In addition to usual kinds of analyses like lag-sequential analysis, the program is especially developed to answer questions with respect to the occurrence of particular patterns in sequences and the degree of similarity between different sequences.

The Quality of Data Collection by an Interview on the Prevalence of Elder Mistreatment

ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to investigate the quality of the interview process that was used to obtain data on the prevalence of elder mistreatment in order to improve the quality of this process in future research studies. Audiotapes of interviews with 143 victims of elder mistreatment were transcribed into verbatim protocols that were subsequently coded and analyzed. The results of the present study show that despite the fact that all interviewers were carefully selected, intensively trained, and supervised during the interview period, 4.2% of the questions were skipped, and in 4.4% of the interactions no usable answer was obtained. However, in all of these cases the interviewer did register an answer, the validity of which is questionable. Considerable differences were found between interviewers with respect to their performance and also between the various questions. Finally, suggestions are made to improve interviewer behavior.

Simulating response behavior in sociological survey interviews

The tenability of the model has been investigated by confronting the simulation outcomes with empirical data of Validity studies’. RESPONSE is a computer model which simulates response behavior of respondents in answering closed questions, posed in survey interviews. RESPONSE can be used to estimate true score distributions from the responses givea The main input variables are the ‘difficulty’ of the question (wording), the saliency of the question topic, the differences in social desirability of the response alternatives which are offered to the respondents, and the degree of ‘suggestiveness’ of the questioa RESPONSE enables sociologists who make use of survey data to assess the amount of bias in their data, and to estimate true score distributions from the obtained responses.

Testing Auxiliary Hypotheses Behind the Interview

Starting from usual practices in the moderate interview, a number of auxiliary hypotheses on which these practices apparently rest, are inferred. From these hypotheses predictions were deduced, which were confronted with results of interview research. It appeared that especially in those cases where the interview is the sole possible technique of observation, conclusions based on the obtained data have to be doubted. The model of the interview proces has to be reformulated, taking these results into account.

Calendar Instruments in Retrospective Web Surveys

Calendar instruments incorporate aided recall techniques such as temporal landmarks and visual time lines that aim to reduce response error in retrospective surveys. Those calendar instruments have been used extensively in off-line research (e.g., computer-aided telephone interviews, computer assisted personal interviewing, and paper and pen interview) and have been shown to increase the quality of retrospectively collected life course data. The goal of our study was to investigate if calendar recall aids can also improve data quality in web surveys. In a methodological field experiment, we evaluated the effects of adding visual feedback and personal landmarks to our questionnaire with regard to response/break off rates, completeness of retrospective reports, interview duration, and respondent evaluations. The study included 1,451 respondents from a probability-based Internet panel who were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions of the experiment. The results indicate that in the web-based calendar tool, visual feedback properties exerted the most influence on data quality.

Role playing in the interview: towards a theory of artifacts in the survey-interview

The method of data collection generally used in the social sciences is the interview (e.g. Brown and Gilmartin, 1969): a procedure by means of which a respondent is induced, through a series of questions presented by an interviewer, to give verbal information about himself which is of interest for a researcher (Scheuch, 1967).

Toward a Theory of Artifacts in the Survey-Interview

The black box analysis, as used in systems research, has appeared to be fruitful for the classification and interpretation of research results, if applied to the survey-interview. The present paper describes the usefulness of the black box model as a means for differentiating between sources of errors, as well as an integrative framework for social psychological theories, explaining and predicting the appearance of artificial data in the survey-interview.