Cultural Variability in Survey Question Processing and Response Behaviors

尽管大量证据表明，文化、民族和种族背景可能对调查测量误差有重要影响，但文化影响调查受访者行为的过程在很大程度上仍未被探索。为了解决这个重要的问题，这项研究有四个目标。这包括(1)调查被调查者的种族/民族和文化对被调查者语言和非语言行为的影响，作为调查访谈中回答处理困难的指标；(2)种族/民族对调查回答风格的影响；(3)种族/民族对认知处理的影响程度由问题设计特征（如主题和格式）调节。(4)文化价值取向的个体差异在多大程度上可以解释种族/民族效应。来自美国国家科学基金会资助的主要调查的问题，包括综合社会调查、全国选举调查和其他主要的全国社会调查，将用于检查这些目标。调查访谈将在芝加哥大都会地区进行，总共有800名成年人来自四个不同的文化群体：非洲裔美国人、韩裔美国人、墨西哥裔美国人和非西班牙裔白人。采访将以英语、韩语、西班牙语进行。访谈将被录音和录像，并随后对行为进行编码，以识别认知处理困难的言语和非言语标记，包括问题理解、记忆检索、反应映射和社会期望反应方面的问题。与每个答案相关的响应延迟也将被电子记录。层次线性模型将用于分析这些数据和解决每个研究目标。随着美国的民族和种族结构继续多样化，了解这种人口结构转变如何使调查结果的解释复杂化将成为一个日益重要的问题。这项研究将有助于理解心理过程的受访者从事，因为他们回答调查问题。这项研究还将为这些过程中的种族/民族差异提供重要的见解。它将提供关于在各种常见类型的调查问题中理解问题的种族/民族差异的本质的见解，以及回答风格的种族/民族差异。它将通过文化价值观的视角来解决种族/民族的作用，通过将其与文化价值取向联系起来，揭示已知的种族/民族在极端反应方式、默许、社会期望反应和其他此类差异方面的差异。该研究还可能导致关于设计调查问题的最佳实践的建议，以最大限度地减少理解和回答风格上的文化差异。这项研究得到了方法学、测量和统计项目、政治学项目、社会学项目和联邦统计机构联盟的支持，作为支持调查和统计方法研究的联合活动的一部分。

Although considerable evidence suggests that cultural, ethnic, and racial background may have important effects on survey measurement error, the processes by which culture influences the survey respondents' behavior remain largely unexplored. To address this important problem, the study has four objectives. These include (1) investigating the effects of respondent race/ethnicity and culture on respondent verbal and nonverbal behaviors as indicators of response processing difficulties in survey interviews, (2) the effects of race/ethnicity on survey response styles, (3) the degree to which the effects of race/ethnicity on cognitive processing is moderated by question design features such as topic and format, and (4) the degree to which race/ethnicity effects can be accounted for by individual differences in cultural value orientations. Questions from major NSF-funded surveys, including the General Social Survey, the National Election Survey, and other major national social surveys, will be used to examine these objectives. Survey interviews will be conducted in the Chicago metropolitan area with a total sample of 800 adults from four distinct cultural groups: African Americans, Korean Americans, Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic Whites. Interviews will be conducted in English, Korean, and Spanish. Interviews will be audio and video recorded and subsequently behavior coded to identify verbal and nonverbal markers of cognitive processing difficulties, including problems with question comprehension, memory retrieval, response mapping, and socially desirable responding. The response latencies associated with each answer also will be electronically recorded. Hierarchical linear modeling will be used to analyze these data and address each study objective.As the U.S. ethnic and racial structure continues to diversify, understanding how this demographic transition may complicate the interpretation of survey results will become an increasing priority. This research will contribute to the understanding of the mental process respondents engage in as they answer survey questions. The study also will provide crucial insight into racial/ethnic differences in these processes. It will offer insights about the nature of racial/ ethnic variability in question comprehension across a variety of common types of survey questions, as well as racial/ethnic variability in response styles. It will address the role of race/ethnicity through the lens of cultural values, unpacking known racial/ethnic differences in extreme response style, acquiescence, socially desirable responding, and other such differences by linking them to cultural value orientations. The study also may lead to recommendations regarding best practices for the design of survey questions that minimize cultural differences in comprehension and response styles. The research is supported by the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program, the Political Science Program, the Sociology Program, and a consortium of federal statistical agencies as part of a joint activity to support research on survey and statistical methodology.