Seymour Sudman - Böcker

Survey researchers have long been aware that the way in which questions are asked determines the obtained responses. However, the exact processes that mediate response effects remained elusive. In the present volume, cognitive psychologists and survey methodologists explore the cognitive processes that underlie respondents' answers to survey questions. The contributors provide an introduction to information processing theories for survey researchers, review current knowledge of response effects in the light of recent theorizing in cognitive psychology, and report a number of experimental studies on question context and question wording. In combination, the chapters provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of response effects in surveys and raise a number of applied and theoretical issues that have so far not been addressed in cognitive psychology.

First Published in 1998. This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of age-related changes in cognitive functioning and explores the implications of these changes for the self-report of attitudes and behaviors. The contributors are leading researchers in cognitive aging and survey methodology, and chapters are written to be accessible to non-specialists. The first part of the book provides an authoritative review of the current state of cognitive aging research, covering topics such as working memory, inhibition, autobiographical memory, metacognition, and attention. A second section examines the unique issues associated with aging, language comprehension and interpersonal communication, while the final section reviews researcher into age-related differences in survey responding.Of particular interest is how age-related changes in cognitive and communicative functioning influence the question-answering process in research situations. Experimental research illustrates that older and younger respondents are differentially affected by question order, question wording and other features of questionnaire design. As a result, many age-related differences in reported attitudes and behaviors may reflect age-related differences in the response process rather than differences in respondents' actual attitudes or behaviors. Implications for research design and psychological theorizing are addressed, and practical solutions are offered. As such, the book will be of interest not only to those in the fields of cognitive aging and gerontology, but also to survey methodologists and researchers in public opinion, marketing, and related fields, who rely on respondents' answers to questions in their research.

WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PAPERBACK SERIES The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists."This book will be an aid to survey statisticians and to research workers who must work with survey data."–Short Book Reviews, International Statistical InstituteMeasurement Errors in Surveys documents the current state of the field, reports new research findings, and promotes interdisciplinary exchanges in modeling, assessing, and reducing measurement errors in surveys. Providing a fundamental approach to measurement errors, the book features sections on the questionnaire, respondents and responses, interviewers and other means of data collection, the respondent-interviewer relationship, and the effects of measurement errors on estimation and data analysis.

Since it was first published more than twenty-five years ago, Asking Questions has become a classic guide for designing questionnaires¾the most widely used method for collecting information about people?s attitudes and behavior. An essential tool for market researchers advertisers, pollsters, and social scientists, this thoroughly updated and definitive work combines time-proven techniques with the most current research, findings, and methods. The book presents a cognitive approach to questionnaire design and includes timely information on the Internet and electronic resources. Comprehensive and concise, Asking Questions can be used to design questionnaires for any subject area, whether administered by telephone, online, mail, in groups, or face-to-face. The book describes the design process from start to finish and is filled with illustrative examples from actual surveys.

In this important book, the authors explore what answers mean in relation to how people understand the world around them and communicate with one another. They offer practical and theoretical insights that will prove invaluable when developing questionnaires.

Autobiographical Memory and the Validity of Retrospective Reports presents the collaborative efforts of cognitive psychologists and research methodologists in the area of autobiographical memory. The editors have included an esteemed group of researchers whose work covers a wide range of issues related to autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports, reflecting the diverse traditions in cognitive psychology and survey research. The first part of the book provides different theoretical perspectives on retrospective reports, along with supporting experimental evidence. The second part of this volume focuses specifically on retrospective reports of behaviors, including recall of the frequency and intensity of physical pain, of the number of cigarettes smoked, of dietary habits, and of child support payments. The following sections address the cognitive processes involved in event dating and time estimation, and a discussion of the differences between self and proxy reports. The final part extends the discussion of autobiographical memories in different directions, including the impact of autobiographical memories on individuals' assessment of their current life, the assessment of social change on the basis of retrospective reports, and the issue of collective memories. This book, an indispensable and timely resource for researchers and students of cognitive psychology as well as to survey methodologists and statisticians, demonstrates the considerable progress made in understanding the cognitive dynamics of retrospective reports.

0 e The contributors to this book review our current knowledge of context effects in survey research, psychological testing, and social judgement. Drawing on recent developments in cognitive psychology, they offer theoretical accounts of the conditions that lead to the emergence of various context effects and report a number of new experimental studies. At stake now are clear, practical needs in the structuring of reliable tests, and a strong interest to develop a coherent theoretical framework to assess and scrutinize context effects, in addition to the desire to align some of the findings in survey research studies with the discoveries made in the information-processing field. This book attests to a fruitful dialogue between cognitive psychologists and survey researchers, as the cognitive processes initiated by question probes are really beginning to be understood and context effects classified and differentiated.