Sources of Error in the Coding of Questionnaire Data

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Abstract
Errors made in the coding of a set of 1,209 relatively structured questionnaires were examined in an effort to discover characteristics of the data set and of the coding instructions which contributed to the occurrence of error. Items included in the questionnaire were ordered with respect to the complexity of the coding task involved. The number of errors per decision was found to vary directly with the level of complexity of the task. Closer examination of the types of decisions involved, including the computation of proportion agreement with criterion codes and validity coefficients, revealed sources of error within different levels of complexity. The use of non-mutually exclusive sets of coding categories was found to introduce error into the coding process, and it is suggested that this error is not reflected in resultant measures of reliability and validity. Decisions made in a series applying the same set of categories to a number of similar responses within an item were found to effect lower validity coefficients for later decisions in the series.

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