A persistent problem in the design of bipolar attitude questions is whether or not to include a middle response alternative. On the one hand, it is reasonable to assume that people might hold opinions which are ‘neutral’ with regard to issues of public controversy. On the other, question designers suspect that offering a mid-point may attract respondents with no opinion, or those who lean t…
Although agree–disagree (AD) rating scales suffer from acquiescence response bias, entail enhanced cognitive burden, and yield data of lower quality, these scales remain popular with researchers due to practical considerations (e.g., ease of item preparation, speed of administration, and reduced administration costs). This article shows that if researchers want to useADscales, they should off…
This article examines the problem of response error in survey earnings data. Comparing workers’ earnings reports in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to their detailed W-2 earnings records from the Social Security Administration, we employ ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression models to assess the effects of earnings determinants and d…
This special issue of Sociological Methods & Research contributes to recent trends in studies that exploit the availability of multiple measures in sample surveys in order to detect the level and patterning to measurement errors. Articles in this volume focus on topics in one of (or some combination of) the three areas: (1) those that develop and test theoretical hypotheses regarding the behavi…
It is common to come across interviews, both transcribed and recorded, that were conducted according to remarkably different strategies that seem to contrast with the recommendations and indications of a large part of the literature on this subject. To understand the reasons behind these different strategies, I will present the outcomes of a study carried out among Italian sociologists who base…
In January 2011 (BMS issue 109), this journal published our article on a new process for developing a structural hypothesis, using a matrix approach and multi-dimensional data analysis techniques (Cohen and Tresser, 2011). The present article continues to develop the matrix assisted hypothesis construction method (matrix method for short) and offers directions for research utilizing this approa…
This article reports an investigation of errors of measurement in self-reports of financial data in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), one of the major social science data resources available to those who study the demography and economics of aging. Results indicate significantly lower levels of reporting reliability of the composite variables in the HRS relative to those found for ‘‘su…
Essentials of Social Research is a short basic primer on social research methodology that will provide straightforward, clear answers to the key questions in research methods, such as: What are the components of scientific analysis? What is grounded theory? What constitutes a causal explanation? How believable are particular research findings? As an introductory primer, the book covers types of…
Abstract. Surveys are the principal source of data not only for social science, but for consumer research, political polling, and federal statistics. In response to social and technological trends, rates of survey nonresponse have risen markedly in recent years, prompting observers to worry about the continued validity of surveys as a tool for data gathering. This introductory article sets the…