Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements
Program of study: International Research Workshop
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Juergen H. P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik (GESIS)
Prof. Dr. Dagmar Krebs (University of Gießen)
Dr. Natalja Menold (GESIS)
Date:
03.10.2011, 09:00 – 12:30
04.10.2011, 09:00 – 12:30
06.10.2011, 09:00 – 12:30
07.10.2011, 09:00 – 12:30
Room: n.s.
Max. number of participants: n.s.
Semester periods per week: n.s.
Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS
Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)
Contents:
The lectures deal with the basic principles which have been established in the best practice of questionnaire design. The theoretical background and current state of research will be demonstrated on examples and practical exercises.
1. Cognitive process and cognitive pretests: Monday
For the beginning the cognitive process in survey responding, including comprehension, retrieval, judgement and formatting response will be presented. For each of these phases the demands for questionnaire design related to the questions about attitudes, opinions and behavior will be explicated. It will be shown, how cognitive pretest techniques (think aloud, probing, confidence rating, paraphrasing) can help to detect the problems in questionnaires, which were related to the cognitive burden of the respondents.
2. Context effects and question wording: Tuesday
This section deals with the impact of situational context given in questionnaires on judgements/answers. Regarding the principles of question wording topics such as to phrase the questions, usage of terms and problems with hypothetical, suggestive, negative and double-barreled questions were attended. For each of the principles examples of problems and their solutions will be given.
3. Constructing of optimal answer formats: Thursday
Constructing of optimal answer formats due the reliability and validity of questions includes topics such as number of scale points, midpoint, usage of unipolare and bipolare scales, labels of scale points, ascending and descending sequences. Related topics are handling of open and closed questions and usage of non-opinion filters. The problems and their solutions are demonstrated with help of examples and exercises.
4. Collection of sociodemographic data: Friday
The fourth part of this lesson demonstrate how to harmonise demographic and socio-economic variables in cross-national comparative survey research. Demographic and socio-economic variables describe the context in which a person is acting. In cross-national comparable research standardised instruments or indices exist only for a very small group of variables. Aside from these instruments there are rules for developing further measurement instruments for measuring socio-demographic variables in cross-national research.
You have to register for the 5th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.