Paired interviews are used to evaluate whether a questionnaire functions properly for both the target respondent and an alternate respondent (proxy). We developed a new application of this tool to evaluate whether a Patient Experience of Care Survey (PECS) for long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) and inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs)…

Empirical researchers using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) can work with crisp, multivalue, and fuzzy sets. The relative advantages of crisp and multivalue sets have been discussed in the QCA literature. There has been little reflection on the more frequent decision between crisp and fuzzy sets for which there often is no theoretical…

Telephone survey interviewers need to be able to accurately record answers to questions. While straightforward for closed questions, this task can be complicated for open questions. We examine interviewer recording accuracy rates from a national landline random digit dial telephone survey. We find that accuracy rates are over 90% for numeric…

Migration of participants in demographic and epidemiological studies results in missing data. One approach to reduce resulting losses in statistical power and potential biases is to follow up migrants at their new residence. We describe the follow-up of migrants who were eligible for participation in a trial of a new questionnaire to measure adult…

Factorial surveys are widely used in the social sciences to measure respondents' attitudes, beliefs, or behavioral intentions. In such surveys, respondents evaluate short descriptions of hypothetical situations, persons, or objects that vary across several dimensions. An important prerequisite of the method's validity is that respondents are able…

Acquiescence is often defined as the systematic selection of agreeable ("strongly agree") or affirmative ("yes") responses to survey items, regardless of item content or directionality. This definition implies that acquiescence is immune to item characteristics; however, the influence of item characteristics on acquiescence…

Internet-based platforms are increasingly used to collect qualitative data. We conducted a quasi-experimental study to explore whether data collection mode affects data content and data collection costs. Participants (N = 171) were assigned systematically to one of four modes--(1) in-person (control), (2) online video-based, (3) online chat-based,…

This article demonstrates what may be gained from combining the walk-along method with the global positioning system (GPS) and geographical information system (GIS) when exploring the social and physical aspects of locally situated daily lives. It focuses on the premise and application of the spatial transcript technique, which allows for an…

The exercise of quantifying the energy consumption data assembled through household surveys, either by the recall-based approach or the meter-based approach, remains a challenging task, especially in rural areas of developing countries. In this article, we propose a device-based bottom-up accounting method for estimating household energy…

A growing body of literature points to the possibilities offered by postsurvey interviewer observations as a source of paradata to obtain insights into data quality. However, their utility in predicting actual behavior of respondents has attracted limited scholarly attention so far. Using data from Round 7 of the European Social Survey, we aim to…

Previous research has shown that increasing the size of incentives can increase response rates for probability-based, cross-sectional surveys. However, the effects of incentives on web panels have not been extensively studied. We sought to answer the question: What is the effect of larger, postpaid incentives on (1) response, (2) data quality, and…

In randomized experiments, inventories with reverse-keyed items are compared with inventories in which all the items are either positively or negatively associated with the underlying concept. The results show that with reverse keying, a control of the potential bias was not sufficient; likewise, the factorial structure, reliability, and validity…

This short take presents story-mapping as a research technique that incorporates multiple methods and data sources to build visual narratives of individual and collective experiences. The goals of story-mapping are the following: (1) iteratively synthesize the collection, analysis, and representation of spatial, visual, and textual information as…

Applying an approach termed "citizen sociolinguistics" offers a unique opportunity to capture a large corpus of naturally occurring language data, especially fleeting interactions. Drawing on citizen science innovations in the natural sciences, citizen sociolinguistics recruits and trains scientists to complete data-related tasks such as…

Over the past few decades, the survey industry has experienced a steady decline in response rates, which has posed numerous challenges for researchers, most notably concerns about nonresponse bias. We present results from three studies conducted in an attempt to increase response rates and reduce nonresponse bias for a U.S. national household…