Research Reports

Second Round Cognitive Pretesting on the Proposed Internet Predation Questions for the National Crime Victimization Survey: Results and Recommendations

Jennifer Beck and Theresa DeMaio

KEY WORDS: pretesting, cognitive interviews, Internet predation

ABSTRACT

Staff from the Statistical Research Division conducted additional pretesting research, in the form of cognitive interviews, on the newly-proposed Internet Predation questions for the 2007 National Crime Victimization Survey. This report presents the results of the cognitive interviews. An initial round of cognitive interviews (SSM # 2007-20) identified significant problems with the proposed questions. Respondents had ambiguous conceptualizations of different Internet actives, and these “blurry concepts” led to critical response errors. After conducting focus groups (SSM # 2008-08) to get a better understanding of how respondents think about their Internet activities, we revised the questions and conducted a final set of cognitive interviews. Results of this final set of interviews indicated that overall, the revised questions worked well. The revisions solved the major problems we observed in the first round of interviews. Initially, these questions posed some problems for “online gamers” because gaming is a complex, interactive activity. We had to make revisions to the questions to account for this complexity. Finally, consistent with the findings in the previous pretesting research, respondents indicated that they may not report continuing friendships with an online stranger. This reticence may be due to the perceived relationship and common interests the respondents may have with the online stranger.

CITATION: Beck, Jennifer and DeMaio, Theresa. Second Round Cognitive Pretesting on the Proposed Internet Predation Questions for the National Crime Victimization Survey: Results and Recommendations. Statistical Research Division Study Series (Survey Methodology #2008-09). U.S. Census Bureau.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Research Division

Created: September 30, 2008
Last revised: June 19, 2008