New Methods for the Measurement of Occupation

目前，大多数调查都以开放式问题询问职业。逐字逐句的回复随后被编码成一个包含数百个类别和数千个工作的分类，这很容易出错，耗时且成本高昂。该项目调查了如何通过在采访中询问与回答相关的问题来改进这一过程。我们开发了一种职业访谈编码工具，并成功地在CATI和CAPI调查中进行了测试。结果是有希望的：55%到85%的文本回复可以用新开发的工具进行编码，并且没有证据表明使用该工具会给采访者和受访者带来额外的负担。在第二个资助阶段，我们的目标是进一步发展这种职业编码方法。为了提高测量的质量和有效性，需要对各种误差源进行深入分析。对文书的改进将反映电脑协助个人面谈、电脑协助电话面谈和网络调查的具体需要。对访谈者行为的分析结果将为培训文件的改进提供信息，以尽量减少访谈者对调查结果的影响。新版本的仪器允许不断改进建议的答案选项。结果将以开源软件的形式提供，以便研究人员可以使用我们的仪器进行自己的调查。

Currently, most surveys ask for occupation with open-ended questions. The verbatim responses are coded afterwards into a classification with hundreds of categories and thousands of jobs, which is error-prone, time-consuming and costly. The project investigates how to improve this process by asking response-dependent questions during the interview. We developed an instrument for interview coding of occupations and successfully tested it in a CATI and a CAPI survey. Results are promising: between 55 and 85 percent of the text responses can be coded with the newly developed tool, and there is no evidence that the use of this tool is an additional burden to interviewers and respondents.During the second funding phase we aim to further develop this method of occupation coding. An in-depth analysis of various error sources is required to inform and improve the quality and the validity of measurement. The improvements to the instrument will reflect the specific requirements of computer-assisted personal interviews, computer-assisted telephone interviews and web surveys. Results from analyzing interviewer behavior will inform the improvement of training documents to minimize the influence of interviewers on the survey results. The new version of the instrument allows for continuous improvement of the suggested answer options. The results will be made available in the form of an open source software so that researchers can use our instrument for their own surveys.