Conferences

In recent years several large scale surveys among difficult to survey groups have been conducted in the Netherlands. Tailor made approaches have been developed to increase the response among these difficult to survey groups. The reason to try and achieve a higher response is to reduce bias in population estimates which will occur when non-respondents systematically differ from respondents with regard to the variables under investigation. The probability of getting biased estimates will increase when response is unequal across different groups. In the Netherlands ethnic groups are seen as difficult to survey. The response among ethnic groups can be increased by the use of interviewers with the same ethnic background, translated questionnaires, longer fieldwork periods and an increased number of contact attempts.

The drawback of these response enhancing measures is that one cannot assume that a (latent) factor will be measurement invariant across these ethnic groups because of the ethnicity of the interviewer and language -and cultural differences. On the one hand because respondents with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds might differ in their opinion as to what is important about the factor being measured and on the other hand because of the perceived social undesirability of certain answers or opinions. With regard to social desirability the ethnicity of the interviewer and language might be of influence. The ethnicity of the interviewer would particularly play a role when the question is about specific ethnic issues. Also the gender match between interviewer and respondent will have an effect as will the sensitivity of the issue.

One of the main objectives of cross cultural survey research is to compare concepts across groups. Specifically in the case of difficult to survey groups this usually leads to a trade-off between representativeness (high and equal distributed response among groups) and measurement invariance. There is the need to adequately measure concepts among all groups involved in the survey and to be able to compare those concepts across group for which they need to be measurement invariant.

This research focuses on the effect of response enhancing measures, such as the use of ethnic interviewers and gender matching on the measurement invariance of concepts. The second aim of this research is to establish if the effect of these response enhancing measures on the measurement invariance of concepts increases if the concepts are more socially sensitive.