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MiCEHS Research Projects Introduction Research Staff Advisory Board Brown Bags Grant Program
Five research projects are underway in
the initial phase of the MiCEHS. These
illustrate the interdisciplinary character of collaborations among the
Center’s research staff. The
projects address three of the major challenges that confront health
research—the conceptual and measurement issues raised by emerging
issues, the issues raised by new data collection technologies, and the
questions raised by the application of new estimation techniques. Projects Project 1: Measurement of Persons with Disabilities Project Directors: Nancy Mathiowetz, Roger Tourangeau The
primary focus of this investigation is the measurement of persons with
disabilities. The project
seeks to assess the effect of alternative questionnaire wording on
reliability (simple response variance) and the effects of self and proxy
reporting on the reliability of responses.
Project 2: Obtaining Accurate Self-Reports of Sensitive Behaviors
Project Directors: Mick Couper, Roger Tourangeau, Eleanor Singer A
variety of health conditions carry personal or social stigma and, as a
result, may be subject to social desirability bias in survey data
collection. Social
desirability biases are apparent in the over-reporting of positive
behaviors (for example, voting in elections) and the underreporting of
negative ones (such as illicit drug use).
Health surveys include many examples of both types: socially
undesirable behaviors related to health (e.g.,
drug and alcohol use, smoking, risky sexual practices, abortion), and
socially desirable behaviors (e.g.,
healthy eating, exercise, dental visits).
Project 3:
Combining Contextual and Individual Data from Multiple Sources
Project Directors: Trivellore Raghunathan, Jim Lepkowski Scientific understanding of the relationship among health factors at the individual level and those at the level of social and spatial aggregates has been severely hampered by the lack of analytic tools. With the widespread availability of those tools, though, it is clear that an important source of data about health has not produced the kind of contextual information needed to understand the interplay of individual and groups.
Project 4: Exploring the Meaning of Consent
Project Directors: Eleanor Singer, Jim Lepkowski Surveys have traditionally been exempt from the requirement for obtaining written informed consent from respondents, except when the inadvertent disclosure of their answers would jeopardize their employment, put them at risk of prosecution, or subject them to public humiliation. Many surveys, however, including surveys of aging populations, request information for which written consent is required, either because they plan to link responses with administrative records, or because the University's or agency's Institutional Review Board deems the survey sufficiently sensitive to warrant the more formal consent procedure. Even when written consent is not required -- as it cannot be in a telephone survey, for example -- the interviewer is often required to read an introduction that includes the elements of informed consent.
Project 5: Statistical Adjustments for Nonresponse
Project Directors: Roderick Little A basic survey estimation strategy is to adjust survey weights to compensate for nonresponse. The most common nonresponse adjustment procedure is to multiply the probability-based weight assigned to the case by the inverse of the weighted response rates in a set of adjustment cells. That is, within each cell, the ratio of the sum of the sampling weights of the respondents and nonrespondents to the sampling weights of the respondents is found and this adjustment factor is used to expand the sampling weights for the respondents.
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