ERIC Number: EJ933703
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Jun
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1531-7714
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Too Reliable to Be True? Response Bias as a Potential Source of Inflation in Paper-and-Pencil Questionnaire Reliability
Peer, Eyal; Gamliel, Eyal
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, v16 n9 Jun 2011
When respondents answer paper-and-pencil (PP) questionnaires, they sometimes modify their responses to correspond to previously answered items. As a result, this response bias might artificially inflate the reliability of PP questionnaires. We compared the internal consistency of PP questionnaires to computerized questionnaires that presented a different number of items on a computer screen simultaneously. Study 1 showed that a PP questionnaire's internal consistency was higher than that of the same questionnaire presented on a computer screen with one, two or four questions per screen. Study 2 replicated these findings to show that internal consistency was also relatively high when all questions were shown on one screen. This suggests that the differences found in Study 1 were not due to the difference in presentation medium. Thus, this paper suggests that reliability measures of PP questionnaires might be inflated because of a response bias resulting from participants cross-checking their answers against ones given to previous questions. (Contains 1 table and 2 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Response Style (Tests), Questionnaires, Reliability, Undergraduate Students, Computer Assisted Testing, Comparative Analysis
Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner. e-mail: editor@pareonline.net; Web site: http://pareonline.net
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Need for Cognition Scale
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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