Memory, Communication, and Data Quality in Calendar Interviews

Abstract

Calendar instruments are hypothesized to promote data quality through the increased use of retrieval cues and conversational probes intended to clarify meanings. this research explores these hypotheses by examining the associations between retrieval and conversational verbal behaviors and data-quality measures. a verbal behavior coding scheme was applied to transcripts of 165 calendar interviews that collected lifecourse information on residence, marriage, employment, and unemployment from respondents in the panel Study of income Dynamics (pSiD). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed three latent factors for interviewers (retrieval probes, rapport behaviors, and conversational behaviors intended to satisfy questionnaire objective) and three latent factors for respondents (retrieval strategies, rapport, and conversational behaviors indicative of difficulty being interviewed). Ratios of discrepancies in annual totals between retrospective calendar reports and reports collected for up to thirty years in the pSiD over the total number of available years were used as measures of data quality. Regression analyses show that the level of behavior and the level of experiential complexity interact in their effect on data quality. both interviewer and respondent retrieval behaviors are associated with better data quality when the retrieval task is more difficult but poorer accuracy when experiential

Parallel associations and the structure of autobiographical knowledge.

“…In comparison to conventional methods, calendar methods result in the more prevalent use of respondent parallel and sequential associations (Belli, Lee, Stafford, & Chou, 2004;Bilgen & Belli, 2010) and that respondents who more often use these associations in calendar interviews provide more accurate retrospective reports, especially when their pasts are more complicated (Belli, Bilgen, & Al Baghal, 2013). Hence, the notion that the greater use of cues in the structure of autobiographical A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 9 knowledge will result in more accurate retrospective reports has received empirical support, but note that the evidence is correlational.…”

Using Data Mining to Predict the Occurrence of Respondent Retrieval Strategies in Calendar Interviewing: The Quality of Retrospective Reports

“…Although calendar methods have produced encouraging results, as noted by Belli et al (2013), these results are limited because they do not examine the communicative interactions between interviewers and respondents directly. In this article, to overcome this limitation, we examine those series of communicative interactions that are most likely to lead to respondents' use of retrieval strategies.…”

“…In terms of the structure of autobiographical memory, we examine those retrieval strategies consisting of parallel and sequential cues (Belli 1998;Belli and Callegaro 2009;Belli et al 2013). With parallel retrieval strategies, respondents cue themselves by remembering a contemporaneous event from a different life domain as an apparent attempt to more fully reconstruct the past.…”

“…Although, as noted above, Belli et al (2013) have demonstrated that respondent retrieval strategies are associated with better data quality, their research used a confirmatory factor-analysis approach to create a single latent measure of respondent retrieval from several behaviors. This work extends that in Belli et al (2013) by providing more focused interactional analyses.…”

“…Although, as noted above, Belli et al (2013) have demonstrated that respondent retrieval strategies are associated with better data quality, their research used a confirmatory factor-analysis approach to create a single latent measure of respondent retrieval from several behaviors. This work extends that in Belli et al (2013) by providing more focused interactional analyses. Specifically, by identifying which behavior series are predictive of better data quality and which are not, we show that behavioral interactions between interviewers and respondents lead to respondent retrieval strategies that vary in their effectiveness.…”