Response effects in surveys on children and adolescents: The effect of number of response options, negative wording, and neutral mid-point
Response effects in surveys on children and adolescents: The effect of number of response options, negative wording, and neutral mid-point
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DOI：
10.1023/b:ququ.0000013236.29205.a6
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发表时间：
2004-02-01
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Sikkel, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Borgers, N;Hox, J;Sikkel, D
社会研究人员越来越多地调查儿童和青少年。他们相信，有关儿童的观点、态度和行为的信息应该从儿童自己那里收集。调查儿童的方法学专业知识仍然稀缺，研究人员依赖于儿童精神病学和教育测试等领域的专门知识，或调查成人的方法学知识。关于成年人，经验证据表明，（认知能力）以及问题特征（问题难度）影响回答质量。本研究报告的方法调查实验的影响，消极制定的问题，回答选项的数量和提供一个中立的中点作为回答选项的问题的特点上的可靠性的回答，使用儿童和青少年作为受访者。这项研究表明，消极制定的问题上的可靠性措施没有影响，虽然儿童的反应一贯不同的消极制定的问题比积极制定的问题。考虑到所有结果的影响的反应选项的数量，并提供一个中立的中点上的不同的可靠性措施考虑，它似乎是最佳的提供约四个响应选项与儿童作为答卷人。
Social researchers increasingly survey children and young adolescents. They are convinced that information about perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors of children should be collected from the children themselves. Methodological expertise on surveying children is still scarce, and researchers rely on ad-hoc knowledge from fields such as child psychiatry and educational testing, or on methodological knowledge on surveying adults. Regarding adults, empirical evidence shows that respondent characteristics ( cognitive abilities) as well as question characteristics ( question difficulty) affect response quality.This study reports on a methodological survey experiment on the effect of negatively formulated questions, the number of response options and offering a neutral midpoint as response option question characteristics on the reliability of the responses, using children and young adolescents as respondents.This study shows no effects of negatively formulated questions on the reliability measures, although children respond consistently differently on negatively formulated questions than on positively formulated questions. Taking all results on the effects of number of response options and offering a neutral midpoints on the different reliability measures into consideration; it would appear that offering about four response options is optimal with children as respondents.