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- Questionnaire design (2)
- Telephone surveys (2)
- Administrative records (1)
- Attitudes (1)
- Battery items (1)
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- CATI surveys (1)
- Data collection (1)
- Data quality (1)
- Disclosure avoidance (1)
- ERGM (1)
- Fertility intentions (1)
- Homeless youth (1)
- Homophily (1)
- Identity (1)
- Interviewer-respondent interaction (1)
- Interviewer–respondent interaction (1)
- Mismatches (1)
- Missing data (1)
- Motherhood (1)
- Network Sampling (1)
- Network bias (1)
- Network sampling (1)
- Path model (1)
- Question features (1)
- Question wording (1)
- Respondent behaviors (1)
- Response latency (1)
- Response time (1)
- Short message service surveying (1)
- Simulation (1)
Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Social Statistics
Short Message Service Surveying With Homeless Youth: Findings From A 30-Day Study Of Sleeping Arrangements And Well-Being, Kimberly A. Tyler, Kristen Olson, Colleen M. Ray
Short Message Service Surveying With Homeless Youth: Findings From A 30-Day Study Of Sleeping Arrangements And Well-Being, Kimberly A. Tyler, Kristen Olson, Colleen M. Ray
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Little is known about the location and consistency of sleeping arrangements among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) and how this is linked to their well-being. This study addresses this gap using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) via short message service (SMS) surveying with 150 YEH over 30 days, to examine how various sleeping arrangements are associated with depression, marijuana use, support received, and service utilization. Results revealed that the average number of consecutive days youth stayed at any particular location varied considerably. Youth who stayed more frequently with a friend/partner or in a transitional living facility (TLF) reported fewer days of being …
An Evaluation Of The 2016 Election Polls In The United States, Courtney Kennedy, Mark Blumenthal, Scott Clement, Joshua D. Clinton, Claire Durand, Charles Franklin, Kyley Mcgeeney, Lee Miringoff, Kristen M. Olson, Douglas Rivers, Lydia Saad, G. Evans Witt, Christopher Wlezien
An Evaluation Of The 2016 Election Polls In The United States, Courtney Kennedy, Mark Blumenthal, Scott Clement, Joshua D. Clinton, Claire Durand, Charles Franklin, Kyley Mcgeeney, Lee Miringoff, Kristen M. Olson, Douglas Rivers, Lydia Saad, G. Evans Witt, Christopher Wlezien
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
The 2016 presidential election was a jarring event for polling in the United States. Preelection polls fueled high-profile predictions that Hillary Clinton’s likelihood of winning the presidency was about 90 percent, with estimates ranging from 71 to over 99 percent. When Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidency, there was a widespread perception that the polls failed. But did the polls fail? And if so, why? Those are among the central questions addressed by an American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) ad hoc committee. This paper presents the committee’s analysis of the performance of preelection polls in …
Effects Of A Government-Academic Partnership: Has The Nsf-Census Bureau Research Network Helped Improve The U.S. Statistical System?, Daniel H. Weinberg,, John M. Abowd, Robert F. Belli, Noel Cressie, David C. Folch, S. H. Holan, Margaret C. Levenstein, Kristen Olson, Jerome P. Reiter, Matthew D. Shapiro, Jolene Smyth, Leen-Kiat Soh, Bruce D. Spencer, Seth E. Spielman, Lars Vilhuber, Christopher K. Wikle
Effects Of A Government-Academic Partnership: Has The Nsf-Census Bureau Research Network Helped Improve The U.S. Statistical System?, Daniel H. Weinberg,, John M. Abowd, Robert F. Belli, Noel Cressie, David C. Folch, S. H. Holan, Margaret C. Levenstein, Kristen Olson, Jerome P. Reiter, Matthew D. Shapiro, Jolene Smyth, Leen-Kiat Soh, Bruce D. Spencer, Seth E. Spielman, Lars Vilhuber, Christopher K. Wikle
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
The National Science Foundation-Census Bureau Research Network (NCRN) was established in 2011 to create interdisciplinary research nodes on methodological questions of interest and significance to the broader research community and to the Federal Statistical System (FSS), particularly to the Census Bureau. The activities to date have covered both fundamental and applied statistical research and have focused at least in part on the training of current and future generations of researchers in skills of relevance to surveys and alternative measurement of economic units, households, and persons. This article focuses on some of the key research findings of the eight nodes, organized …
The Effects Of Respondent And Question Characteristics On Respondent Answering Behaviors In Telephone Interviews, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth, Amanda Ganshert
The Effects Of Respondent And Question Characteristics On Respondent Answering Behaviors In Telephone Interviews, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth, Amanda Ganshert
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
In a standardized telephone interview, respondents ideally are able to provide an answer that easily fits the response task. Deviations from this ideal question answering behavior are behavioral manifestations of breakdowns in the cognitive response process and partially reveal mechanisms underlying measurement error, but little is known about what question characteristics or types of respondents are associated with what types of deviations. Evaluations of question problems tend to look at one question characteristic at a time; yet questions are comprised of multiple characteristics, some of which are easier to experimentally manipulate (e.g., presence of a definition) than others (e.g., attitude …
Item Location, The Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, And Responses To Battery Questions In Telephone Surveys, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth, Beth Cochran
Item Location, The Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, And Responses To Battery Questions In Telephone Surveys, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth, Beth Cochran
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Survey researchers often ask a series of attitudinal questions with a common question stem and response options, known as battery questions. Interviewers have substantial latitude in deciding how to administer these items, including whether to reread the common question stem on items after the first one or to probe respondents’ answers. Despite the ubiquity of use of these items, there is virtually no research on whether respondent and interviewer behaviors on battery questions differ over items in a battery or whether interview behaviors are associated with answers to these questions. This article uses a nationally representative telephone survey with audio-recorded …
The Effects Of Mismatches Between Survey Question Stems And Response Options On Data Quality And Responses, Jolene Smyth, Kristen Olson
The Effects Of Mismatches Between Survey Question Stems And Response Options On Data Quality And Responses, Jolene Smyth, Kristen Olson
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Several questionnaire design texts emphasize a dual role of question wording: the wording needs to express what is being measured and tell respondents how to answer. Researchers tend to focus heavily on the first of these goals, but sometimes overlook the second, resulting in question wording that does not match the response options provided (i.e., mismatches). Common examples are yes/no questions with ordinal or nominal response options, open-ended questions with closed-ended response options, and check-all-that apply questions with forced-choice response options. A slightly different type of mismatch utilizes a question stem that can be read as asking for two different …
Within-Household Selection In Mail Surveys: Explicit Questions Are Better Than Cover Letter Instructions, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth
Within-Household Selection In Mail Surveys: Explicit Questions Are Better Than Cover Letter Instructions, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Randomly selecting a single adult within a household is one of the biggest challenges facing mail surveys. Yet obtaining a probability sample of adults within households is critical to having a probability sample of the US adult population. In this paper, we experimentally test three alternative placements of the within-household selection instructions in the National Health, Wellbeing, and Perspectives study (sample n = 6,000; respondent n = 998): (1) a standard cover letter informing the household to ask the person with the next birthday to complete the survey (control); (2) the control cover letter plus an instruction on the front …
Sram898 — Special Topics: Survey Informatics, Unl — Fall 2015 Course Syllabus, Adam Eck
Sram898 — Special Topics: Survey Informatics, Unl — Fall 2015 Course Syllabus, Adam Eck
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Technology is rapidly changing the way survey researchers collect, manage, and analyze data measuring public opinion. Cutting-edge methods, tools, and data types offer greater insights into both the survey process, as well as the implications of the substantive responses provided by respondents. In this course, we will explore the role of technology throughout data collection, data management, and data analysis within survey research. We will also explore the increasing need for interdisciplinary teams within research to draw from the strengths of different disciplines (e.g., survey research and methodology, computer science and engineering, cognitive psychology, sociology, statistics, etc.) to properly answer …
The Effect Of Cati Questions, Respondents, And Interviewers On Response Time, Kristen Olson, Jolene D. Smyth
The Effect Of Cati Questions, Respondents, And Interviewers On Response Time, Kristen Olson, Jolene D. Smyth
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
In this paper, we evaluate the joint effects of question, respondent, and interviewer characteristics on response time in a telephone survey. We include question features traditionally examined, such as the length of the question and format of response options, and features that have yet to be examined that are related to the layout and format of interviewer-administered questions. We examine how these question features affect the time to ask and answer survey questions and how different interviewers vary in their administration of these questions. This paper uses paradata from the Work and Leisure Today survey and uses cross-classified random effects …
Birth Cohort Changes In The Association Between College Education And Religious Non-Affiliation, Philip Schwadel
Birth Cohort Changes In The Association Between College Education And Religious Non-Affiliation, Philip Schwadel
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
This article examines the changing association between higher education and reporting no religious affiliation in the United States. I argue that increases in higher education have led to a decline in the individual-level effect of college education on religious non-affiliation. Results from hierarchical age-period-cohort models using more than three and a half decades of repeated cross-sectional survey data demonstrate that the strong, positive effect of college education on reporti ti ng no religious affiliation declines precipitously across birth cohorts. Specifically, a bachelor’s degree has no effect on non-affiliation by the 1965–69 cohort, and a negative effect for the 1970s cohorts. …
Assessing Within-Household Selection Methods In Household Mail Surveys, Kristen Olson, Mathew Stange, Jolene D. Smyth
Assessing Within-Household Selection Methods In Household Mail Surveys, Kristen Olson, Mathew Stange, Jolene D. Smyth
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Household surveys are increasingly moving toward self-administered modes of data collection. To maintain a probability sample of the population, researchers must use probability methods to select adults within households. However, very little experimental methodological work has been conducted on within-household selection in mail surveys. In this study, we experimentally examine four methods—the next-birthday method, the last-birthday method, selection of the youngest adult in the household, and selection of the oldest adult in the household—in two mail surveys of Nebraska residents (n = 2,498, AAPOR RR1 36.3 percent, and n = 947, AAPOR RR1 31.6 percent). To evaluate how accurately respondents …
The Importance Of Motherhood And Fertility Intentions Among U.S. Women, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Andrew V. Bedrous
The Importance Of Motherhood And Fertility Intentions Among U.S. Women, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Andrew V. Bedrous
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Fertility intentions are associated with achieved fertility; therefore, understanding the factors associated with fertility intentions is important. Considerable research has examined factors associated with fertility intentions, but no one has explored the importance of motherhood to women. Guided by life course and identity theories, we use the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, a data set collected from a random sample of U.S. women aged 25–45 in 2004 through 2007, to assess the relationship between importance of motherhood and fertility intentions. Adding importance of motherhood to a model including other variables associated with fertility intentions increases the variance explained by 6.4 …
Social Distance In The United States: Sex, Race, Religion, Age, And Education Homophily Among Confidants, 1985 To 2004, Jeffrey A. Smith, Miller Mcpherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin
Social Distance In The United States: Sex, Race, Religion, Age, And Education Homophily Among Confidants, 1985 To 2004, Jeffrey A. Smith, Miller Mcpherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Homophily, the tendency for similar actors to be connected at a higher rate than dissimilar actors, is a pervasive social fact. In this article, we examine changes over a 20-year period in two types of homophily—the actual level of contact between people in different social categories and the level of contact relative to chance. We use data from the 1985 and 2004 General Social Surveys to ask whether the strengths of five social distinctions—sex, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, and education—changed over the past two decades in core discussion networks. Changes in the actual level of homophily are driven by the …
Structural Effects Of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing At Random, Jeffrey A. Smith, James Moody
Structural Effects Of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing At Random, Jeffrey A. Smith, James Moody
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Network measures assume a census of a well-bounded population. This level of coverage is rarely achieved in practice, however, and we have only limited information on the robustness of network measures to incomplete coverage. This paper examines the effect of node-level missingness on 4 classes of network measures: centrality, centralization, topology and homophily across a diverse sample of 12 empirical networks. We use a Monte Carlo simulation process to generate data with known levels of missingness and compare the resulting network scores to their known starting values. As with past studies (Borgatti et al., 2006; Kossinets, 2006), we find that …
Advanced Seminar – Interviewer-Respondent Interaction: Survey Research & Methodology Special Topics 898, Spring 2012, Robert Belli
Advanced Seminar – Interviewer-Respondent Interaction: Survey Research & Methodology Special Topics 898, Spring 2012, Robert Belli
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
This course will explore the theory and observations that underlie the attempt of survey methodologists to understand the nature of interviewer-respondent interactions and their impact on data quality. This exploration will entail the examination of different interviewing methods and different methods to observe and analyze the verbal behavioral streams that occur between interviewers and respondents. In addition, analytic approaches that seek to understand the impact of verbal behaviors on data quality will be considered.
Macrostructure From Microstructure: Generating Whole Systems From Ego Networks, Jeffrey A. Smith
Macrostructure From Microstructure: Generating Whole Systems From Ego Networks, Jeffrey A. Smith
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
This paper presents a new simulation method to make global network inference from sampled data. The proposed simulation method takes sampled ego network data and uses Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to reconstruct the features of the true, unknown network. After describing the method, the paper presents two validity checks of the approach: the first uses the 20 largest Add Health networks while the second uses the Sociology Coauthorship network in the 1990’s. For each test, I take random ego network samples from the known networks and use my method to make global network inference. I find that my method …