Ensuring the validity of private forest owner typologies by controlling for response style bias and the robustness of statistical methods

Abstract

In survey-based segmentation of forest owners, two threats to the validity of results have largely been ignored: (1) response style bias and (2) the robustness of the statistical methods. This study demonstrates response style bias detection, presents an approach for correcting for acquiescence Á the systematic tendency to agree with survey items, and explores the sensitivity of a probabilistic clustering algorithm to requirements for the validity of the typology. Structural equation modeling and Monte Carlo data generation techniques were employed to detect acquiescence and estimate its effect on construct validity. A survey of the relevance of management information for private forest owners (N 0364) was used as an example. Although acquiescence was confirmed, it had minor effect on the results and no effect on the substantive construct. Uncertainty about the number of forest owner types and membership can be reduced by using probabilistic clustering and observing the number of clusters while changing the requirements for the validity of clusters. The expectation maximization algorithm proved to be robust even to stringent requirements for the validity of clusters. By controlling for response style and the robustness of statistical methods, the validity of private forest owner typologies can be better ensured.

A Simulation Study of Threats to Validity in Quasi-Experimental Designs: Interrelationship between Design, Measurement, and Analysis

“…A similar methodology has been already found as useful to study the influence of threats to validity in other fields; e.g., (a) in forest research, Ficko and Boncina (2014) operationalized the influence of response style bias and the robustness of statistical methods in the results using simulations and including latent variables in the models representing those threats to validity; and (b) in medical research, Mickenautsch et al (2014) studied the inflation of effect size owing to selection bias using simulations. In the current study, we show the application and usefulness of simulations and the SEM framework in social sciences, specifically in psychology, to detect the influence of other different threats to validity.…”

Forest owner representation of forest management and perception of resource efficiency: a structural equation modeling study

“…Considering this, social scientists have raised some important concerns regarding consistently responding to questionnaire items on a basis other than that for which the items were designed, referred to as response style (Paulhus 1991). Response style can lead to biased models of social representations when elicited by quantitative methods without the detection of, and correction for, response styles (Billiet andMcClendon 2000, Ficko andBončina 2014). We found no acquiescence bias in our study (results available upon request).…”

Competing discourses of the forest shape forest owners’ ideas about nature and biodiversity conservation

“…The analysis of human-nature relationships within the wider forest discourses is another feature of this paper that we regard as promising and potentially useful in other land-use contexts. It seems that the human tendency to give politically correct and socially acceptable answers (Ficko and Bončina 2014) was counteracted effectively when the forest-owners were free to speak or not speak about nature issues.…”