Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology Building a Bridge Between Disciplines (1984) / Chapter Skim
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Chapter 1: The Seminar
Chapter 1: The Seminar
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The two primary disciplines involved were cognitive psychology and survey research, but other cognitive scientists and statistical methodologists also played important roles. The Advanced Research Seminar on Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology (CASM)
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It should attempt to develop ideas and plans for collaborative research involving cognitive scientists and survey researchers. ~ 2 ~ In addition to recall, which was the primary topic of the ~ 980 workshop, it should consider other cognitive processes that take place in survey interviews, such as comprehension and judgment.
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Two background papers that examine relationships between the cognitive sciences and survey research were prepared and distributed ahead of time to the St . Michaels seminar participants.
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For the most part, reputable survey research is carried out with probability samples that represent broad population groups; cognitive research, by contrast, i~ typically conducted with samples of convenience drawn from the student population at a single college or university. Survey research is usually carried out in field nettings, such as the respondent ' s home, and involves everyday tasks, such as the recall of recent events; cognitive research often uses the controlled conditions and artificial tasks of the laboratory.
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Although this view has much to recommend it, particularly in opinion research where it is important for the interviewer not to bias the respondent, it may be less appropriate in other types of survey research. For example, some questions place a premium on accurate recall, and interviewers might help respondents by suggesting strategies [or retrieval; other questions require estimates or judgments, and there interviewers might help respondents by giving them anchors for the Judgments.
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From the point of view of cognitive psychology, survey methodology offers a number of advantages over classical laboratory methods. Well-run surveys use probability samples selected from well-defined populations, and these samples are often much larger than those used in most laboratory studies.
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Such a surrey would collect data on the range of emotional experiences in the general population and examine a variety of questions, such as the impact of emotion on mental and physical health and the relationship between emotions and their expression. Surveys an Cognitive Experiments The proposals described so far have in common the collection of survey data on issues relevant to cognitive researchers; this section describes how surveys can provide ~ context for experimental cognitive research.
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One concrete proposal was for laboratory investigation of memory phenomena associated with reference periods. Survey researchers have found that underreporting is more marked for events that occur at the beginning of a reference period than it is for later events.
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Survey research suggests not only new phenomena for cognitive researchers to investigate, but also new methods of investigation. Since Ebbinghaus initiated the scientific study of memory in the 1880s, memory researchers have relied on a single paradigm: the experimenter has control over the information to be remembered and, in consequence, knows exactly what the subjects are trying to recall.
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IMPROVING SURVEY METHODS It survey research has much to offer the cognitive sciences, then the proposals made at the seminar indicate that the cognitive sciences also can contribute to survey methodology. The proposals are grouped into four categories: general strategies for improving survey methods; cognitive research that has special relevance to survey methodology; issues calling for further methodological research; and research tools that might be applied profitably to questions concerning survey methods.
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Relevant Research from-the Cognitive Sciences As is already apparent, a number of areas of investigation from the cognitive sciences were seen as particularly relevant Deco survey methodology. One such area is research on scripts and schemata.
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Judgmental heuristics (the strategies used in rendering a Judgments is a second topic of cognitive research that has broad applicability to questions of survey methods. There in a large body of results indicating that people use a number of strategies, each with its characteristic shortcomings, to Stile frequencies and probabilities.
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Comprehension Survey researchers are faced with the difficult problem of individual and cultural variations in the interpretation given to particular terms in survey questions. Not only do abstract terms, like "big government," evoke a wide range of meanings, but even relatively concrete terms, like "doctor, n can have varied interpretations.
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Question order relates to another concept from cognitive psychology, the concept of proactive inhibition. When subjects in memory experiments are asked to recall lists of related items, performance gets worse on the later lists, a phenomenon referred to as the build-up of proactive inhibition.
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In another variation, a rolling reference period would be tried; rather than reporting about a period defined by fixed dates, respondents would report about the two weeks prior to the interview. Another tack for possibly improving respondent recall involved forewarning respondents about the content of the interview.
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We simply do not know much about how respondents answer survey questions, and this ignorance was an undertone in much of the discussion about judgment. Questions that are intended to trigger memories for specific events may, in fact, elicit estimates based on more general knowledge.
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This finding suggests that both sets of answers may be produced through a similar process that relies more on judgment than memory. Interviewer Behavior Although much of the discussion focused on the respondent as a source of nonsampling error, the interviewer and the ~ Interview situation were also seen as potential areas for improvement in survey methods.
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Experiments to quantify the fatigue effect would provide useful data for both cognitive scientists and survey researchers.
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In the NHIS, one version of the questionnaire might be suitable {or respondents with minor medical problems, another {or respondents with serious chronic conditions. Organizing question orders according to conversational principles would reduce the inflexibility that can result from standardization.
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Videotaped interviews are clearly provocative tools that can stimulate active collaboration between cognitive scientists and survey researchers. Most of the proposed research concerned nonsampl~ng errors in surveys; several techniques were suggested for assessing the magnitude of nonsampling errors.
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The crossdisciplinary method would establish an upper limit on the quality of information available and could be used as the standard for asses sing the shortcomings of questionnaire data. disciplinary team could would be interviewed and ISSUES FOR THE NATIONAL HEALTH INTERVIEW SURVEY A good part of the discussion centered on issues specific to the NHIS, especially issues of content.
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It would be worthwhile to examine the estimated distributions of discharges by month under the different reference periods and to compare them to estimates based on hospital records. Conditions The NHIS asks respondents a series of questions concerning medical conditions.
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For the questions on the loss of days from work, respondents could be asked first to report all days lost from work for any reason and then to say why each day was lost. Another approach would be to begin the restricted activity section with questions about normal activities during the reference period.
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Surveys can be used to collect data of interest to cognitive scientists and can serve as a vehicle for cognitive research using larger and more heterogeneous samples than those normally used in laboratory experiments. Lee National Health Interview Surrey and other surveys might be improved by applying what cognitive scientists have already learned about comprehension, memory, and Judgment.
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