Suchergebnisse

Ban on U.S. media coverage; analysis of May 1985-Mar. 1986 data; based on conference paper.

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Why Look at the Reporting of Risk? -- 2. The Natural History of Hazard Reporting -- 3. Which Hazards Do the Media Feature, and Which Do They Ignore? -- 4. The Effect of Geographic Location on the Coverage of Hazards -- 5. Information About Hazards: Their Benefits and Costs -- 6. Blame -- 7. The Use of Sources in the Reporting of Hazards -- 8. How Accurately Do the Media Report on Risk? -- 9. Looking Back and Looking Forward -- References -- Appendix A: Categories of Hazard and Selection Rules -- Appendix B: Examples of Coding Forms

"The use of open-ended questions in survey research has a very long history. In this paper, building on the work of Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Howard Schuman, we review the methodological uses of open-ended questions and verbatim responses in surveys. We draw on prior research, our own and that of others, to argue for increasing the use of open-ended questions in quantitative surveys. The addition of open-ended questions - and the capture and analysis of respondents' verbatim responses to other types of questions - may yield important insights, not only into respondents' substantive answers, but also into how they understand the questions we ask and arrive at an answer. Adding a limited number of such questions to computerized surveys, whether self- or interviewer-administered, is neither expensive nor time-consuming, and in our experience respondents are quite willing and able to answer such questions." (author's abstract)

"Survey researchers are making increasing use of paradata - such as keystrokes, clicks, and timestamps - to evaluate and improve survey instruments but also to understand respondents and how they answer surveys. Since the introduction of paradata, researchers have been asking whether and how respondents should be informed about the capture and use of their paradata while completing a survey. In a series of three vignette-based experiments, we examine alternative ways of informing respondents about capture of paradata and seeking consent for their use. In all three experiments, any mention of paradata lowers stated willingness to participate in the hypothetical surveys. Even the condition where respondents were asked to consent to the use of paradata at the end of an actual survey resulted in a significant proportion declining. The author's research shows that requiring such explicit consent may reduce survey participation without adequately informing survey respondents about what paradata are and why they are being used." (author's abstract)

For several years, we have experimented with various ways of communicating disclosure risk and harm to respondents in order to determine how these affect their willingness to participate in surveys. These experiments, which used vignettes administered to an online panel as well as a mail survey sent to a national probability sample, have demonstrated that (a) the probability of disclosure alone has no apparent effect on people's willingness to participate in the survey described, (b) the sensitivity of the survey topic has such an effect, and (c) making explicit the possible harms that might result from disclosure also reduces willingness to participate, in both the vignette and the mail experiments. As a last study in this series, we experimented with different ways of describing disclosure risk in informed consent statements that might more plausibly be used in real surveys, again using vignettes administered to an online panel. As suggested by our earlier work, we found that the precise wording of the confidentiality assurance had little effect on respondents' stated willingness to participate in the hypothetical survey described. However, the experimental manipulations did have some effect on perceptions of the risks and benefits of participation, suggesting that they are processed by respondents. And, as we have found in our previous studies, the topic of the survey has a consistent and statistically significant effect on stated willingness to participate. We explore some implications of these findings for researchers seeking to provide adequate information to potential survey respondents without alarming them unnecessarily.

If empirical estimates of disclosure risk are included in informed consent statements for surveys or other forms of research, participants must be able to understand the information provided. Using data from an online vignette-based experiment, this article explores the role that numeracy or quantitative literacy may play in comprehension of disclosure risk. Results suggest that less numerate persons are less sensitive to extreme differences in the disclosure risk described in the hypothetical vignettes.

Monetary incentives are increasingly used to help motivate survey participation. Research Ethics Committees have begun to ask whether, and under what conditions, the use of monetary incentives to induce participation might be coercive. The article reports research from an online vignette-based study bearing on this question, concluding that at present the evidence suggests that larger incentives do not induce research participants to accept higher risks than they would be unwilling to accept with smaller ones.

This article presents the contemporary situation regarding the National Research Act of 1974 that established the human research protection system to ensure the rights of human participants in biomedical & behavioral research. In recent years, national advisory bodies, federal agencies, & the US Congress have attempted to address key concerns in the human subjects protection arena. The authors provide an overview of the current actors & activities, their recommendations, & an analysis of the current situation & future prospects. 13 References. E. Sanchez