Research Reports

Cognitive Testing of Spanish Language Translation of Selected Questions in the American Housing Survey (AHS)

George R Carter III, Alisú Schoua-Glusberg, M. Mandy Sha, Georgina McAvinchey, Leticia Reed, Sonia Rodriguez

ABSTRACT

In preparation for the bilingual data collection of the American Housing Survey (AHS) in 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau has pretested a selected number of survey questions in both Spanish and English from the AHS survey. A total of 128 in-depth cognitive interviews were conducted with Spanish speakers who spoke little or no English, as well as with English speakers. The purpose of this project was to identify and correct translation issues in the selected questions at the lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. Because the entire AHS instrument is too long for examination in a single cognitive interview, two subsets of questions were identified for testing: Phase 1 contained questions directed to homeowners and Phase 2 included questions for renters. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were conducted for each phase. This report documents the final findings, from recruitment through protocol development to results, of qualitative research conducted by RTI International (RTI) and Research Support Services (RSS) in collaboration with and under the direction of the U.S. Census Bureau.

CITATION:

George R Carter III, Alisú Schoua-Glusberg, M. Mandy Sha, Georgina McAvinchey, Leticia Reed, Sonia Rodriguez. (2011). Cognitive Testing of Spanish Language Translation of Selected Questions in the American Housing Survey (AHS). Center for Survey Measurement, Research and Methodology Directorate Research Report Series (Survey Methodology #2011-01). U.S. Census Bureau. Available online at <http://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/rsm2011-01.pdf>.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Survey Measurement, Research and Methodology Directorate

Published online: March 1, 2011
Last revised: March 1, 2011