Clarifying Survey Questions

Although comprehension is critical to the survey response process, much about it remains unknown. Research has shown that concepts can be clarified through the use of definitions, instructions or examples, but respondents do not necessarily attend to these clarifications. This dissertation presents the results of three experiments designed to investigate where and how to present clarifying information most effectively. In the first experiment, eight study questions, modeled after questions in major federal surveys, were administered as part of a Web survey. The results suggest that clarification improves comprehension of the questions. There is some evidence from that initial experiment that respondents anticipate the end of a question and are more likely to ignore clarification that comes after the question than before it. However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that clarifications are most effective when they are incorporated into a series of questions. A second experiment was conducted in both a Web and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) survey. IVR was chosen because it controlled for the effects of interviewers. The results of this experiment suggest that readers appear no more capable of comprehending complex clarification than listeners. In both channels, instructions were least likely to be followed when they were presented after the question, more likely to be followed when they were placed before the question, and most likely to be followed when they were incorporated into a series of questions. Finally, in a third experiment, five variables were varied to examine the use of examples in survey questions. Broad categories elicited higher reports than narrow categories and frequently consumed examples elicited higher reports than infrequently consumed examples. The implication of this final study is that the choice of categories and examples require careful consideration, as this choice will influence respondents' answers, but it does not seem to matter where and how a short list of examples are presented

Investigating the Impact of Anti-Corruption Strategies on International Business: An Interim Report

The detrimental impact of corruption on society and economic well-being in both developed and developing countries is well established. International business provides ample opportunity for engaging in a variety of corrupt activities, from bribing of public officials and others in positions of power for obtaining contracts, licences and tax concessions to price fixing and bid rigging. Increased awareness of the negative impact of corruption has over recent years led to the introduction of a broad spectrum of measures designed to combat corruption including in the private sector. These measures involve a range of stakeholders and regulatory approaches (both legal and non-legal). The essential questions now concern the extent to which these are achieving their objectives in terms of tackling corruption. This Interim Report starts with a discussion of the current anti-corruption framework and then proceeds with an examination of the available empirical research to establish how corruption in the business sector is addressed. Though these earlier surveys usefully highlight some general themes they are not directly comparable, provide only a limited understanding of the issue, and raise many unanswered questions. Sections 2 and 3 of this Report thus provide the context for the present authors’ own survey. Sections 4 and 5 discuss in detail the design and implementation of this survey (to date), which aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the extent to which key stakeholders are aware of and respond to different anti-corruption measures, the activities they are involved in for the purpose of combating corruption, and the factors which influence their behaviour in relation to corruption. As well as providing valuable insights with respect to company views and experiences this research is unique in also surveying NGOs. The findings of this research project should therefore lead to a greater understanding of stakeholder practices and perceptions, and consequently of how anti-corruption efforts might be strengthened. Whilst it would be premature to draw conclusions at this pilot stage, the findings of the pilot survey discussed in Section 6 highlight the value of investigating stakeholder views in this way, as well as raising some interesting possibilities regarding assumptions about their actions and motivations and additional questions for the next phase of the survey

In an Era of Enhanced Cybersecurity: The Effect of Disclosing a Third Party’s Role in Confidentiality Pledges on Response Propensity

Abstract Federal surveys often pledge that personally identifiable information (PII) will be used for statistical purposes only and that the willful disclosure of PII by employees who have been sworn to confidentiality is subject to penalties. In 2015, the passing of the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor federal computers for cyber threats. Since DHS personnel are not bound to the confidentiality pledges used by the statistical agencies, the question became how to inform respondents about these changes without alarming them and harming response rates. This paper reports on an experiment conducted in a survey of public-school principals with a simple random sample (n = 4,122). The experiment examined differences in response rates across three versions of pledges disclosing the cybersecurity monitor: one pledge specified explicitly the role of DHS, one referred to the monitors as “Federal employees and contractors,” and a control version referred implicitly to DHS monitors via a legal citation. Half of the pledges included the penalty language, and the other half did not. There were no statistically significant differences between any of the experimental comparisons. We conclude that, of the pledges studied, the DHS version of the pledge with penalty language provides respondents with the most accurate information for deciding whether to participate in the survey without harming response rates.</jats:p

Design of Web Questionnaires: An Information Processing Perspective for the Effect of Response Categories

In this study we use an information-processing perspective to explore the impact of response scales on respondents answers in a web survey.This paper has four innovations compared to the existing literature: research is based on a different mode of administration (web), we use an open-ended format as a benchmark, four different question types are used, and the study is conducted on a representative sample of the population.We find strong effects of response scales.Questions requiring estimation strategies are more affected by the choice of response format than questions in which direct recall is used.Respondents with a low need for cognition and respondents with a low need to form opinions are more affected by the response categories than respondents with a high need for cognition and a high need to evaluate.The sensitivity to contextual clues is also significantly related to gender, age and education