From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 10 Mar 2004 - 09:24:17 GMT
Thanks Frankie and Lawry. I must admit I'm surprised to hear that this
is not a big area of study, although there is that 'survey survey'
problem which is rather thorny.
I found the idea of just discounting the answers of those who are
suspected to be 'cheating' interesting -- kind of like the 'bad day to
predict the weather' principle that comes out of complex short term
climate models, cos that's all they can manage given the inherent
difficulties.
Just to put it in context; I'm predominantly a data modeller and user
reqs gatherer these days, and getting people to (a) be completely honest
about how they and others work, and (b) stop saying they're in favour of
good things, and against bad things, is a bugger :)
Thanks again guys -- good stuff.
Cheers, Chris.
Lawrence DeBivort wrote:
> Greetings, all,
>
> Years ago (ok, decades) I did a study within our psych department on how
> accurately people were responding to surveys and test instruments. I results
> were astonishingly low, and one consequence of the research was that I moved
> away from using such instruments and surveys in my own work.
>
> I note the trouble that Khalil Shikaki got into recently in carrying public
> opinion surveys among Palestinians. My sense is that people tended to
> respond accurately, there, but didn't like the publication of the results as
> they could be construed to lift pressure on the Israelis to deal fairly with
> the Palestinians.
>
> I don't know of any really good discussions on this subject, and there is of
> course a meta-problem in carrying out a survey to assess the accuracy with
> which people respond to surveys!
>
> Best regards,
> Lawry
>
>
>
>>>Does anyone know of a decent review article that addresses people's
>>>behaviour when filling in psychometric tests? (i.e. the way they
>>>might try to guess what the right sort of answer might be instead of
>>>answering honestly, and perhaps arms race style counter-tactics by
>>>various designers such as repeating the question with a different
>>>formulation).
>
>
>
>>>Cheers, Chris.
>
>
>
> Frankie: > I was hoping someone else would help you out with this because I
> am
>
>>trying to remember stuff I learned in class over 10 years ago. But
>>IIRC some of this stuff ought to give you a place to start.
>>
>
>
>
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>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk) MIAPE Project -- psidev.sf.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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