TL;DR: The guidelines described in this document are based on a review of cross-cultural adaptation in the medical, sociological, and psychological literature and led to the description of a thorough adaptation process designed to maximize the attainment of semantic, idiomatic, experiential, and conceptual equivalence between the source and target questionnaires.
Abstract: With the increase in the number of multinational and multicultural research projects, the need to adapt health status measures for use in other than the source language has also grown rapidly. 1,4,27 Most questionnaires were developed in English-speaking countries, 11 but even within these countries, researchers must consider immigrant populations in studies of health, especially when their exclusion could lead to a systematic bias in studies of health care utilization or quality of life. 9,11 The cross-cultural adaptation of a health status selfadministered questionnaire for use in a new country, culture, and/or language necessitates use of a unique method, to reach equivalence between the original source and target versions of the questionnaire. It is now recognized that if measures are to be used across cultures, the items must not only be translated well linguistically, but also must be adapted culturally to maintain the content validity of the instrument at a conceptual level across different cultures. 6,11‐13,15,24 Attention to this level of detail allows increased confidence that the impact of a disease or its treatment is described in a similar manner in multinational trials or outcome evaluations. The term “cross-cultural adaptation” is used to encompass a process that looks at both language (translation) and cultural adaptation issues in the process of preparing a questionnaire for use in another setting. Cross-cultural adaptations should be considered for several different scenarios. In some cases, this is more obvious than in others. Guillemin et al 11 suggest five different examples of when attention should be paid to this adaptation by comparing the target (where it is going to be used) and source (where it was developed) language and culture. The first scenario is that it is to be used in the same language and culture in which it was developed. No adaptation is necessary. The last scenario is the opposite extreme, the application of a questionnaire in a different culture, language and country—moving the Short Form 36-item questionnaire from the United States (source) to Japan (target) 7 which would necessitate translation and cultural adaptation. The other scenarios are summarized in Table 1 and reflect situations when some translation and/or adaptation is needed. The guidelines described in this document are based on a review of cross-cultural adaptation in the medical, sociological, and psychological literature. This review led to the description of a thorough adaptation process designed to maximize the attainment of semantic, idiomatic, experiential, and conceptual equivalence between the source and target questionnaires. 13 . Further experience in cross-cultural adaptation of generic and diseasespecific instruments and alternative strategies driven by different research groups 18 have led to some refinements
TL;DR: Overall, the findings show that paper-and-pencil and Internet data collection methods are generally equivalent, particularly for quantitative and qualitative equivalence, with nonequivalence only for some aspects of auxiliary equivalence.
Abstract: Self-report survey-based data collection is increasingly carried out using the Internet, as opposed to the traditional paper-and-pencil method. However, previous research on the equivalence of these methods has yielded inconsistent findings. This may be due to methodological and statistical issues present in much of the literature, such as nonequivalent samples in different conditions due to recruitment, participant self-selection to conditions, and data collection procedures, as well as incomplete or inappropriate statistical procedures for examining equivalence. We conducted 2 studies examining the equivalence of paper-and-pencil and Internet data collection that accounted for these issues. In both studies, we used measures of personality, social desirability, and computer self-efficacy, and, in Study 2, we used personal growth initiative to assess quantitative equivalence (i.e., mean equivalence), qualitative equivalence (i.e., internal consistency and intercorrelations), and auxiliary equivalence (i.e., response rates, missing data, completion time, and comfort completing questionnaires using paper-and-pencil and the Internet). Study 1 investigated the effects of completing surveys via paper-and-pencil or the Internet in both traditional (i.e., lab) and natural (i.e., take-home) settings. Results indicated equivalence across conditions, except for auxiliary equivalence aspects of missing data and completion time. Study 2 examined mailed paper-and-pencil and Internet surveys without contact between experimenter and participants. Results indicated equivalence between conditions, except for auxiliary equivalence aspects of response rate for providing an address and completion time. Overall, the findings show that paper-and-pencil and Internet data collection methods are generally equivalent, particularly for quantitative and qualitative equivalence, with nonequivalence only for some aspects of auxiliary equivalence.
TL;DR: This article found that the jokesters showed considerably more pronounced distorting effects on some psychosocial and behavioral outcome variables than the inaccurate responders did, suggesting that although this effect may not seriously bias the results in studies that focus on large groups, for research focusing on some special subgroups (e.g., adoption groups, immigrant groups, disability groups), this effect could pose a serious challenge for the validity of research findings.
Abstract: Using Add Health data, the authors provide evidence that some adolescents gave inaccurate and/or invalid responses on a self-administered questionnaire. Further analyses show that these adolescents were much more likely to report extreme levels on psychosocial and behavioral outcome variables. A distinction was made between inaccurate responders (e.g., inaccurate/false responses due to carelessness or confusion) and jokesters (e.g., intentional false responses). The findings show that the jokesters showed considerably more pronounced distorting effects on some psychosocial and behavioral outcome variables than the inaccurate responders did. The authors suggest that although this jokester effect may not seriously bias the results in studies that focus on large groups, for research focusing on some special subgroups (e.g., adoption groups, immigrant groups, disability groups), this effect could pose a serious challenge for the validity of research findings.
TL;DR: In this article, a scale analysis of a fourteen-item self-report measure of delinquency, using three years of data from the Monitoring the Future study, an annual national survey of high school seniors, is presented.
Abstract: Multiple-item measures of self-reported offending typically provide the principal outcome measures for individual level research on the causes of crime and deviance. This article directs attention to the substantial problems presented by the task of forming composite scores for these measures, and it presents a possible solution to those problems. We consider scaling by means of the graded response model from item response theory (IRT) as a potential means of overcoming the shortcomings of traditional summative scaling and of obtaining valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of our measures. We illustrate this strategy through a scale analysis of a fourteen-item, self-report measure of delinquency, using three years of data from the Monitoring the Future study, an annual national survey of high school seniors. The graded response model proves to be consistent with the data, and it provides results that address important substantive questions about self-report measures. The findings are informative about the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies for developing self-report instruments, indicating that there is little to be gained by making fine distinctions in the frequency of individual delinquent acts.