Archiving Information on the Quality of Survey Measurement

SES-1331454杜恩·阿尔文宾夕法尼亚州立大学，大学园区本研究的重点是社会调查中测量的可靠性。关于调查中测量误差的来源和开发高质量调查工具的最佳做法，也就是好的问卷，已经写了很多。该项目的总体目标是为调查方法文献中存在的关于好的调查问题的质量是什么的猜测建立一个事实基础。该项目将为社会科学调查中使用的代表典型问题的大约900个问题建立一个可公开访问的信息数据库。数据库将包含对具体问题可靠性的估计，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相对于测量误差水平的最佳性质。通过对几个大型小组研究的可靠性信息和调查问题属性的分析，将就调查问题的属性提出实用建议，以提高调查数据的质量。该项目建立在先前NSF资助的基础上，该基金依赖于对美国人口的六个具有代表性的小组调查，所有调查都涉及概率样本-三个国家选举小组、美国人的变化生活小组研究和美国(底特律地区)家庭小组研究--这些小组研究为450多个问题产生了特定问题的可靠性估计。本研究有三个主要目标如下：(1)扩展现有的关于调查测量可靠性的数据库；(2)使用两项新研究(使用对健康和退休研究和一般社会调查小组研究的新分析)另外400个或更多调查问题的特定问题的可靠性估计来复制先前的发现；以及(3)为公开可用的关于调查测量可靠性的信息档案制定一个长期计划。鉴于调查测量是大多数社会科学研究的一个关键因素，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作出了贡献，这些数据可以根据本研究的结果进行评估。这项研究将通过向公众提供在先前NSF支持的研究中获得的可靠性估计以及这里建议的扩展，以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，来增加我们目前的知识。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建立一个可靠程度的公共档案，这可能会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.