‘similarly, the best order of questions for major items may not be
“what" “when" and "how much" but rather "what" "how much" and
finally "when", since dating an event is often a difficult task
for a respondent. By providing the respondent with the
additional cue concerning the cost before asking about the date
of the event, the accuracy of that date may be improved. (I
understand that this defeats the present purpose of the order in
which the cost question is excluded if the date is outside the

reference period).

The third aspect of respondent burden listed above is
the problem associated with reporting for other consumer unit
Members. Regardless of how well a questionnaire is designed, if
a respondent has no knowledge of an event or purchase, the event
will go unreported. The use of an all-self respondent rule is
prohibitively expensive --however, it is important that the
Bureau begin to measure the effects of using proxy reports, with
the end of such research being tne ability to adjust expenses

most affected by the use of a proxy.

There are also severai issues that are related to
respondent burden that I believe the Bureau should address.
These include:

i. the effectiveness of placing difficult sections of
the questionnaire at the end of the instrument.
The placement at the end raises two questions:
(a) are the respondent and/or the interviewer too
tired at this point to complete these more
difficuit sections; and (b) does this placement at
the end result in heightening the interviewer's
anxiety for the earlier sections of the
questionnaire (Knowing that these tough sections
are coming).

Z. detailed income questions that are asked during the
spring. Has any research been done to assess
whether better reporting of income is associated
with completing federal and state taxes?


whether the person has been looking for work
during the past 4 weeks. Does this mean at any
time during the past 4 weeks or throughout ail 4
weeks?

3, frames of reference for reporting income.
Questions 25C and 25D ask the respondent to report
either hourly wages or weekly wages. It may be
more useful (and subsequently more accurate) to
allow the respondent to report wages in the form
he or she knows best (e.g. monthly, hourly,
annually) and then have him or her report the
usual number of hours associated with that wage.


The CE questionnaire is quite extensive -- a respondent
must respond to a broad range of questions ranging from insurance
and mortgage payments to clothing and utility costs. The
extensive nature of the questionnaire leads to the second
potential source of response burden --the diversity of recall

tasks the respondent faces.

The identification of the consumer unit member best
able to answer these questions is an important step toward
improving the quality of the data and one which does net appear

-to be used in the current administration of the questionnaire.

In addition to determining a "best" respondent for the CU, the

LUV Bureau should consider implementing a design where efforts are

made to interview the same respondent for the CU.

The range of expenditures covered in the CE
questionnaire requires that the respondent search and retrieve
several different episodes from long term memory. It is
difficult to assess how these various expenditures are best
recalled --the present design groups "Similar" costs together and
questions the respondent as to whether "anyone in the consumer
unit had any expenditures for item X". If the respondent answers
"ves", further questions may ask for the specific item, who the
item was purcnased for, when the item was purchased, and the
cost. it may be useful to see if a different order of thes
questions improves recall. For example, in the sections of the
questionnaire in which there is interest in knowing for whom the
item was purchased, recall may be improved by asking about each
CU member separately, e.g. thinking about yourself, were any
sweaters bought for you? any shirts? any slacks? If memory for
purchases is stored according to whom the item was purchased for
rather than by the type of item, this order may improve recall
(albeit adding length to an already long questionnaire).


Consumer Expenditure Survey: Diary

Several of the issues raised in the discussion of the
CE interview are also applicable to the CE diary. These issues
include the need to determine a "best" consumer unit reporter and
attempts to assess the under-reporting related to proxy

responses.

One statement made at the conference concerned the fact
that approximately 20% of the diaries are completed by recall
with the interviewer recording the information. Since this is
considered an acceptable means for collecting information from
those consumer units that initially agreed to cooperate, why not

use this approach to convert some portion of the initial

“ refusers?

If tne data for the diary are collected by recall, the
respondent faces two tasks -- episodic recall and estimation
processes. The respondent must first remember if any of the
specific type of item was purchased and then estimate how much
and the total cost. It is probable that the completion of the
estimation task is based on "usual" weekly expenditures for an

AS item witn the respondent adjusting the amount based on

ne recollection of spending more or less on the item in the week of

- ‘interest. One approach for collecting diary information by
recall made be to have the respondent make base estimates for
items purchased frequently and then adjust those base estimates

for the diary week.

With respect to increasing the recording of information

in the diaries, the new experimental diary in which the

Oo oO

respondent checks the type of purchase and records the cost of

the item is an improvement that would appear to reduce respondent


References

M. (1982) “Transformation of Memory in Everyday Life".

In Memory Observed, U. Neisser (ed.) San Francisco:
W.H. Freeman and Company.

Linton,

Marquis, K. (1978) Record Check Validity of Survey Responses: A
Reassessment of Bias in Reports of Hospitalizations.
Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation.



Me trooy

Questionnaire Design Advisory Conference

comprehending and answering a question put forth by an
interviewer requires that a person draw on several facets of
Auman cognition, including language comprehension, memory
retrieval, social desirability judgments, and verbal generaticn.
Each of these aspects of cognition affect the quality of the
person's response. To a large extent, the field of survey
research is dependent upon people's ability to recall events and
provide details about those events to complete strangers. If
people are unable to provide descriptions of those "events", the

quality of the data is questionable.

The interview can be seen as a stimulus-response
situation in which questions provided by the interviewer serve as
the stimulus in the form of retrieval cues. Recall of the
appropriate type of event or formation of an opinion is the
response. Inadequate recall can be linked to several factors --
the quality of the question, the length of the reference period,
the saliency of the event, the uniqueness of the event, and
Characteristics of the respondent. All of these factors are so
interest in examining the Bureau's two surveys of interest for
this conference: the Consumer Expenditure Surv (potn the
tion Survey.

interview and the diary) and the Current Populi

Consumer Expenditure: Interview Survey

The initial impression one has in either reviewing the

Consumer Expenditure instrument or participating as a resporden

is the burden the instrument places on the respondent. The

s
purden can be divided into several dimensions including:

the recall period;



burden. In reviewing the form, I noted that the information
concerning size of the package is no longer recorded. Was this
step taken aS another means of reducing respondent burden?

Current Population Survey .
The difficuities with the CPS, were to a large extent
well covered in the report prepared by BLS-Census Bureau

Questionnaire Design Task Force (1986) -~ most of the discussion
here will reiterate the comments made in that report. The areas

of concern include:

l. the introduction to the respondent. In both the
current version of the CPS and the proposed
revision the conditional phrase "not counting work
around the house" may be confusing. The phrase
needs to clarify that the only type of work to be
excluded is unpaid labor around one's own house.

2. the inconsistency among question concerning key
concepts and the potential for unacceptable levels
of interviewer variance. The issue of what
constitutes looking for work appears to be one of
the concepts in which it is not clear from the
manual as to what definitively constitutes looking
for work. The ambiguity will lead to large
interviewer effects that are likely to be affected
by socio-demographic characteristics of the
respondent.

3. “How many nours did ... work last week at ail
jobs?" This is a difficult question for a
respondent to answer. If the goal is to only have
an estimate, the use of a single question is
acceptable. However, if the goal is to have an
accounting of the actual number of hours worked,
it may be useful to provide the respondent with a
series of cues to determine the number of hours
worked last week. This is the approach taken in
the redesigned survey.

. shifts in reference period. The initial questions
ask the respondent about "last week". For those
without a job, the next set of questions asks
about the "past four weeks". Does the last four
weeks include the current week? Question 22 asks

ao


2. the diversity of recall for different types of
expenditures;

3. knowledge of other consumer unit members
expenditures.

The reference period for most of the Consumer
Expenditure interview items is over three months. A three month
recall period can be assessed as both a relatively short
reference period (e.g. for major purchases such as automobiles,
major appliances, etc.) or as extremely long (e.g. for items of
minor importance such as small clothing items, minor household
purchases, and food purchases). The reference period is not the
sole factor that affects the quality of reporting far these
different items. Rather it is the length of the recall period in
conjunction with the relative salience of a purchase and the

uniqueness of the purchase that affect reporting.

Salience is a difficult term to define but one which is
usually associated with both the importance of an event and the
level of emotion associated with the event. Linton (1982)
suggested that the best remembered events are those that meet the
following four criteria: (1) the event is emotional at the time

of occurrence; (Z) it marks a transition point for the
undividual; (3) it is relatively unique; and (4) it retains its
emotional significance. "Emotion" is not usually a term that we

relate to purchases of items such as dishwashers or a new pair of
socks; however, one could conceive cf the cost of an item as a
proxy of “emotion” for this particular study.

The relative uniqueness of an event, as noted above, i

also associated with the accuracy of recall. Inhibition and
interference theories (see Marquis, 1978) suggest that single
cccurrences of an event are more readily recalled than events

which fall within a class of related events.


The potential for poor quality data (as evidenced in
comparisons with the National Accounts which indicates problems
in the areas of apparel and food) suggests that the recall period
for these types of common and non-salient items be shortened. It

is difficult to suggest a recall period which would minimize both
the level of omissions and telescoping. It would be useful to
experiment with at least two shorter recall periods: a one week
period and a one month recall period and compare weekly
, expenditures for each recall period with estimates from the diary
expenditures. The final conclusion may be that for some types of

expenditures, it may not be feasible to collect data for any

extended recall period --thus limiting the collection of these

types of expenditures to the diary method.

Apart from the length of the recall period, there were
several points in the questionnaire where a respondent may be
confused about the time frame of interest. For instance, when
should the respondent include the current month and when should
he or she refer to only the previous three calendar months. Some
questions refer to "this month"; does this mean the last 30 days
or the current calendar month?

Regardiess of the length of the refere
may be helpful to the respondent to bound the period of interest
according to his or her own timeline. One appro fo)
hand the respondent a calendar which shows the three months of
interest and request that the respondent take a few moments to
note (or the interviewer could write the information) events that
may have occurred during the time period. These events could
include birthdays, anniversaries, the beginning or end of school
or vacations, etc. Little research has been done in the area of
“framing” the reference period for the respondents -- this may be
cf interest to pursue in a laboratory type setting.