Field Methods

This article analyzes paradata, or data on survey processes, from the 2008 Albany Youth Health Survey to examine the ‘‘usability’’ of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in collecting health and behavioral information among inner-city adolescents. Two parallel sets of data analysis were conducted: one at a subject level and a second at a survey question/item level. Outcomes related to usability issues included difficulty with practice questions, time spent on the survey/item, responding before completion of the audio, and revisiting a question. Overall, participants had relatively few usability issues with the PDAs. At the subject level, participants with lower academic performance were more likely to have difficulty with practice questions, revisit a question, and take more time. The variable-level analysis showed that an increasing level of variable type complexity was negatively associated with a question being revisited and positively associated with completion time. This study suggests that PDAs and other types of handheld computers can be used to collect sensitive data among urban adolescents. Increased practice time to orient certain respondents on certain types of questions on PDA-administered surveys may increase the ability to collect valid and reliable data on sensitive topics.

Survey researchers are concerned that lack of anonymity in mail surveys might adversely affect respondents’ willingness to respond to the survey or to reveal their true opinions. There has been research on whether graphics on the questionnaire cover affect willingness to respond to mail surveys, but no study has discussed whether identification designs affect data quality. This article explores how three identifier designs affect item nonresponse and socially undesirable answers for two sensitive topics in medical biotechnology. Results indicate that questionnaires with no identifiers induce less item nonresponse and reveal more socially undesirable answers than those with identifiers but no significant difference between the two identifier designs. Implications for survey research practice are discussed.

The debate on the limits and relevance of the different name generators comes with the development of social network studies. The core questions are: What are they supposed to construct? For what research question? Some procedures tend to choose a precise target with a unique name generator; others prefer to use a series of name generators. The authors discuss here some specificities and advantages of these methods for ego-centered networks. The authors then present the ‘‘contextual’’ name generator, which was developed in longitudinal qualitative panel studies in France and Québec. This tool gives access to a great variety of information focused on sociological questions. Its original design differentiates two complementary stages to distinguish the global contexts-based network from specific resource-based networks. This tool remains flexible and may be adapted to different topics.

Network-based interventions are gaining prominence in the treatment of chronic illnesses; however, little is known about what aspects of network structure are easily identified by nonexperts when shown network visualizations. This study examines which structural features are recognizable by nonexperts. Nineteen nonexperts were asked to pile sort 68 network diagrams. Results were analyzed using multidimensional scaling, discriminant analysis, cluster analysis, and PROFIT analysis. Participants tended to sort networks along the dimensions of isolates and size of largest component, suggesting that interventions aimed at helping individuals understand and change their social environments could benefit from incorporating visualizations of social networks.

Common herbal remedy knowledge varies and is transmitted among individuals who are connected through a social network. Thus, social relationships have the potential to account for some of the variation in knowledge. Cultural consensus analysis (CCA) and social network analysis (SNA) were used together to study the association between intracultural variation in botanical remedy knowledge and social relationships in Tabi, Yucatan, Mexico. CCA, a theory of culture as agreement, was used to assess the competence of individuals in a domain of herbal remedies by measuring individual competence scores within that domain. There was a weak but positive association between these competence scores and network centrality scores. This association disappeared when age was included in the model. People in Tabi, who have higher competence in herbal remedies tend to be older and more centrally located in the herbal remedy inquiry network. The larger implication of the application of CCA and SNA for understanding the acquisition and transmission of cultural knowledge is also explored.