Archiving Information on the Quality of Survey Measurement

duane alwin宾夕法尼亚州立大学，大学公园本研究侧重于社会调查测量的可靠性。关于调查中测量误差的来源和开发高质量调查工具（即好的问卷）的最佳实践，已经写了很多。该项目的首要目标是为调查方法文献中存在的关于什么是好的调查问题的质量的猜想建立一个事实基础。该项目将为社会科学调查中使用的大约900个具有代表性的典型问题建立一个可公开访问的信息数据库。该数据库将包含特定问题的可靠性估计，以及问题属性的详细编码（例如内容、回答格式和问题长度），可用于评估调查问题在测量误差水平方面的最佳属性。通过对几项大型面板研究的可靠性信息和调查问题属性的分析，对调查问题的属性提出切实可行的建议，从而提高调查数据的质量。这个项目建立在NSF之前的资助基础上，它依赖于六个国家（或地区）对美国人口的代表性小组调查，所有这些调查都涉及概率样本——三个全国选举小组，美国人改变生活小组研究，以及美国（底特律地区）家庭小组研究——对450多个问题进行了特定问题的可靠性估计。本研究有以下三个主要目标：(1)扩展现有的关于调查措施可靠性的数据库；(2)通过对两项新研究（使用对健康与退休研究和综合社会调查小组研究的新分析）中额外400个或更多调查问题的特定问题可靠性估计来复制先前的发现；(3)制定一项长期计划，以建立关于调查措施可靠性的公开信息档案。更广泛的影响本研究将通过为具有代表性的调查问题池提供一个公开可用的可靠性估计数据库，从而显著增加社会科学研究基础设施。鉴于调查测量是大多数社会科学研究的关键因素，拟议研究的更广泛影响在于它对几乎所有类型的调查数据的使用的贡献，这可以根据本研究的结果进行评估。这项研究将增加我们目前的知识，使可靠性估计在先前的nsf支持的研究中获得，随着这里提出的扩展，以一种允许用户在调查感兴趣的调查问题类型的问题可靠性时搜索、过滤或查询数据库的方式提供给公众。因此，拟议项目的长期目标是为调查中使用的典型信息收集方法的可靠性水平建立一个公共档案，这可以对新调查的调查问题的发展产生影响，并增加我们对现有调查质量的了解。

SES-1331454Duane AlwinPennsylvania State University, University Park This research focuses on the reliability of measurement in social surveys. There has been much written about the sources of measurement errors in surveys and best practices in developing high quality survey instruments, that is, good questionnaires. The overarching goal of the project is to establish a factual basis for conjectures that exist in the survey methods literature concerning what are the qualities of good survey questions. The project will build a publicly accessible data base of information for roughly 900 questions representative of typical questions used in social science surveys. The data base will contain estimates of question-specific reliabilities, along with detailed coding of attributes of the questions (e.g. content, response formats, and question length), which can be used to evaluate the optimal properties of survey questions with respect to levels of measurement error. Through an analysis of the reliability information and the attributes of survey questions from several large-scale panel studies, practical suggestions will be made about the attributes of survey questions that will improve the quality of survey data.This project builds on prior NSF funding, which relied on six nationally (or regionally) representative panel surveys of the American population, all involving probability samples -three National Election panels, the American's Changing Lives panel study, and the Study of American (Detroit Area) Family panel study -which produced question-specific reliability estimates for more than 450 questions. The present study has three major objectives, as follows: (1) extending an existing data base on the reliability of survey measures, (2) replicating prior findings using question-specific reliability estimates for an additional 400 survey questions or more from two new studies (using new analyses of the Health and Retirement Study and General Social Survey panel studies), and (3) developing a long-range plan for a publicly available archive of information on the reliability of survey measurement.Broader ImpactThis research will significantly increase the social science research infrastructure by providing a publicly available data base on reliability estimates for a representative pool of survey questions. Given that survey measurement is a key ingredient in the majority of social science research, the broader impact of the proposed research lies in its contribution to the uses of virtually all types of survey data, which can be evaluated in terms of the results of this study. The research will add to our current knowledge by making the reliability estimates obtained in the prior NSF-supported research, along with the extension proposed here, available to the public in a manner that allows users to search, filter or query the data base in investigating the question reliability of types of survey questions of interest. Thus, the long-range goal of the proposed project to create a public archive of the levels of reliability for the typical kind information gathering approaches used in surveys can have an impact on the development of survey questions for new surveys, as well as increase our understanding of the quality of existing surveys.