Cognitive Testing of Translations of ACS CAPI Materials in Multiple Languages

Written by:
RSM2006-09

Introduction

In an effort to ensure high-quality data from linguistically isolated populations included in the American Community Survey (ACS) sample, the ACS language team at the Census Bureau took the initiative to develop translations of ACS supporting documents into five languages: Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese. This task order, the Cognitive Testing of Translations of ACS CAPI Materials in Multiple Languages, was designed to evaluate these translated materials in four of the aforementioned languages to determine 1) whether these materials meet the Census Bureau Pretesting Standard (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003) and the Census Bureau Guideline for Translation (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004); 2) whether respondents who see the translated documents have a similar understanding of the intended communication as the English-speaking respondents; 3) what types of informed-consent messages are conceptually difficult to translate effectively; and 4) what could be done to overcome this difficulty. The languages tested for this task include: Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Russian, as well as English, for comparative purposes.

Page Last Revised - October 8, 2021