Respondents' understanding of social survey questions : example of a question on subjective social status

Hafner-Fink, Mitja (author), Hlebec, Valentina (author), Uhan, Samo (author)

When researchers design survey questions, they must, among other things, ensure the comparability of responses from different respondents. This means that all respondents are expected to understand the question in the same way. Precisely how the respondents understand the survey question and how they formulate the answer to it is the subject of this article. Here, we tackle this kind of problem using the example of a survey question about subjective social status (SSS) used in the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). We used a mixed methods design, specifically a sequential exploratory design, where qualitative analyses of data from cognitive interviews were supplemented with quantitative analyses of survey data. Firstly, we conducted a qualitative study in the form of cognitive interviews using the thinking-aloud technique. We conducted a qualitative analysis using open coding to identify general categories that should capture the content of the interviewees’ think-aloud process. Secondly, we used regression analysis to check the correspondence between (objective) socioeconomic status and subjective social status on the data of the ISSP 2019 survey. The results of the regression analyses show that the respondents do take into account their (actual) socio-economic position when self-ranking on the social scale such as education and income. Cognitive interviews show that the respondents differ regarding which dimension of the socio-economic situation they relate to when answering the question on SSS. Furthermore, explanations of self-classification that go beyond the actual socio-economic position are possible as well.

• Language: English
• Keywords: social survey, answering process, cognitive interviewing, thinking-aloud, subjective social status
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: 19 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 21, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-177781
• UDC: 303.62
• ISSN on article: 1854-0023
• DOI: 10.51936/iozi1267
• COBISS.SI-ID: 263702787
• Publication date in RUL: 07.01.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Advances in methodology and statistics
• Shortened title: Metodol. zv.
• Publisher: Fakulteta za družbene vede
• ISSN: 1854-0023
• COBISS.SI-ID: 215795712

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: družboslovne ankete

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0151
• Name: Slovensko javno mnenje