Conferences

The paper demonstrates the application of immediate validation technique onto the classic standardized left-right self-placement question, often used in surveys.

Immediate validation is to some extent original technique for the verification of validity of survey question in a standardized questionnaire that has been developed by the author in theoretical and practical level. It draws upon the methodological stream of Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology (CASM) and concentrates on errors that grow out of the questionnaire and that emerge in the phase of interpretation of the question by respondent. It verifies the meaning of the target question/term by means of cognitive techniques and it conducts so right in the course of the main survey.
The possibilities of the usage of the technique will be demonstrated mainly via testing the validity of standard left-right political orientation self-placement question, which was conducted by the author in a series of methodological survey experiments. When applied to these terms the immediate validation method confirmed that these terms connote things from various different areas to different people, ranging from general categories or political parties to the finer aspects of individual civic freedoms and that such differences in the perception are then often related, for example, to the position on the left-right scale itself. Moreover, it will be shown, that roughly one-half of people perceive the terms leftwing and rightwing each from a different perspective that introduces the question of unidimesionality of the scale itself.

Important part of the presentation will be also the analysis of validity of the method itself that will be demonstrated upon the data of consequent methodological survey experiment. The conclusions suggest that the method is really able to map the content of short-term memory, which is the object of context effects, and does not merely investigate more stable long-term memory structures.

On the other hand, the paper does not intend to disqualify the question itself because of its questionable content validity, and concludes in the sense of constructive usage of deeper information obtained; that has to be put beside the fact, that construct validity of the question has been already approved for many times.

On the example of simple left-right question, immediate validation is described as a technically easy technique that can interestingly improve the methodological and informative value of social surveys. The possibility of including it in the main survey, which makes its results quite strong in a statistical sense, is emphasized as well as the possibilities of further enhancements by means of experimental designs of data collection process.