Question Difficulty and Respondents' Cognitive Ability: The Impact on Data Quality

TitleQuestion Difficulty and Respondents' Cognitive Ability: The Impact on Data Quality
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1997
AuthorsKnauper, B, Belli, RF, Hill, DH, Herzog, AR
JournalJournal of Official Statistics
Volume13
Issue2
Pagination181-199
Call Numberwp_1996/Knauper_hr96-038.pdf
KeywordsHealth Conditions and Status, Medicare/Medicaid/Health Insurance, Methodology
Abstract

Older respondents lower in cognitive ability are more affected by question difficulty than older respondents higher in cognitive ability. Respondents lower in cognitive ability gave more DK responses to difficult than to easy questions, while the differences between the difficult and easy questions were not as apparent for respondents with higher cognitive abilities. This effect may result in biased survey findings because responses to difficult questions from respondents with lower cognitive ability would be underrepresented.

URLhttps://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/abs/1046
Endnote Keywords

Health-cognitive ability/Question Characteristics/Type of Responses

Endnote ID

8110

Citation Key6591