Survey researchers distrust self-report yet their closed-ended items miss respondents’ phenomenology

Evidence

My monolingual identity is a major inhibitor to my communication internationally, and to that of most Americans. The hodgepodge of French, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, and Arabic that I can utter does not substitute for the multilingual fluency needed for nuanced discourse. For example, if I must use male translators to ask uneducated Palestinian women how they feel about their lives, how am I to judge the filtered responses? What editing has occurred? What facial and tonal nuances have I missed because of my primary English-speaking identity? What fears do they have that I will get them in trouble with their menfolk in satisfying my outsider curiosity? — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1181 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Survey self-reports wildly overstate environmental organization membership — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 2057; Self-reported nonprejudice is often doubted by social psychologists; Survey items fail to capture respondents’ own lived experience of inner conflict and racism — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2203 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Monolingualism corrupts cross-cultural research by forcing mediated self-reports #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1181