Survey Methodology #2003-17 - The American Community Survey (Acs) En Espanol: Using Cognitive Interviews To Test The Functional Equivalency Of Questionnaire Translations - U.s. Bureau Of The Census Page 6
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52• What questionnaire design issues may compound the issue of functional equivalence?
Mapping responses to the pre-coded categories may be difficult if the categories do not
reflect the responses offered by Spanish speakers, which may be different from those
offered by English speakers. Question-order effects may reveal different patterns for
English and Spanish speakers, depending on the topic and the order in which questions
are asked. Automated instruments pose programming challenges because logic for fills
in Spanish needs to be defined using a different set of variables than those used to define
English fills.
• How can we improve the functional equivalence of questionnaire translations?
1. Pretest questionnaire translations before they are fielded to assess how respondents
interpret key terms, questions and response categories, and to determine whether
those interpretations are consistent with the English content.
2. Research the best way to express source language (i.e., English) terms or concepts
that are not translatable or that may be translated in a number of different ways.
3. Keep proper nouns in English. Linguists refer to this process as “borrowing.” For
example, Social Security is a proper noun and the name of a U.S. institution.
Translating this name leads almost all respondents to misinterpret the meaning of this
term; however, borrowing the English name appears to be more effective in
conveying the desired meaning.
4. Avoid using false cognates, as these can lead to coding error. For example, the word
“colegio” in Spanish looks and sounds like the English word “college,” but the
Spanish word is a vague term that could refer to any type of school (and therefore
grade level).
5. Define logic for Spanish fills using Spanish grammar rules. For example, the English
fill for a possessive adjective (your/his/her) is defined according to subject (self or
proxy) and sex (if proxy). The same fill in Spanish would need to be defined based
on the number (singular or plural) of the noun.
6. Use empirical methods to address intralanguage variation. For example, use
cognitive interviews or focus groups to determine which words are most consistently
understood by different subgroups of the target language population. Then aim is to
use decontextualized language. That is, use generic words that most speakers of a
language will understand regardless of class, origin, level of education, etc.
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