Design, Evaluation, and Analysis of Questionnaires for Survey Research, 2nd Edition

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The most innovative contribution of the first edition of the book was the introduction of a computer program (SQP) for predicting the quality of survey questions, created on the basis of analyses of 87 multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) experiments. At that time (2007), this analysis was based on 1067 questions formulated in three different languages: English, German, and Dutch. The predictions were therefore also limited to questions in these three languages.

The most important rationale for this new edition of the book is the existence of a new SQP 2.0 program that provides predictions of the quality of questions in more than 22 countries based on a database of more than 3000 extra questions that were evaluated in MTMM experiments to determine the quality of the questions. The new data was collected within the European Social Survey (ESS). This research has been carried out since 2002 every two years in 36 countries. In each round, four to six experiments were undertaken to estimate the quality of approximately 50 questions in all countries and in their respective languages. This means that the new program has far more possibilities to predict the quality of questions in different languages than its predecessor, which was introduced in the first edition of the book.

Another very important reason for a new edition of the book is also related to the new program. Whereas the earlier version had to be downloaded and used on the same PC, the new one is an ...