Paradata
The paradata of a data set or survey are data about the process by which the data were collected.[1][2] Paradata of a survey are usually "administrative data about the survey."[3]
Example paradata topics about a survey include the times of day interviews were conducted, how long the interviews took, how many times there were contacts with each interviewee or attempts to contact the interviewee, the reluctance of the interviewee, and the mode of communication (such as phone, Web, email, or in person).[4] Thus there are paradata about each observation in the survey. These attributes affect the costs and management of a survey, the findings of a survey, evaluations of interviewers, and inferences one might make about non-respondents.
Paradata information can be used to help achieve the goals of a survey. For example, early responses may be mainly from one type of respondent, and the collectors knowing this can focus on reaching the other types so the survey has good coverage of the intended population. Thus survey efforts can be dynamically responsive to the paradata.[5]
In principle a survey's metadata includes its paradata.
The term is attributed to Couper (1998).[6][7][8]
References
[edit]- ^ O'Reilly, Jim. Paradata and Blaise: A Review of Recent Applications and Research. http://www.ibuc2009.blaiseusers.org/2009/papers/7d.pdf
- ^ Groves, R.M.; Heeringa, S.G. (2006). "Responsive design for household surveys: tools for actively controlling survey errors and costs" (PDF). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 169 (3): 439–457. doi:10.1111/j.1467-985X.2006.00423.x. hdl:2027.42/71787. S2CID 27265860.
- ^ Safir, Black, and Steinbach. 2001. Using Paradata to Examine the Effects of Interviewer Characteristics on Survey Response and Data Quality, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, http://www.amstat.org/sections/SRMS/Proceedings/y2001/Proceed/00620.pdf
- ^ Taylor, Beth L. 2008. The 2006 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Paradata File: Overview and Applications. Section of Survey Research Methods--JSM 2008. http://www.amstat.org/sections/SRMS/proceedings/y2008/Files/301266.pdf
- ^ Frauke Kreuter (ed.). 2013. Improving Surveys with Paradata: Analytic Uses of Process Information. ISBN 978-0-470-90541-8
- ^ Frauke Kreuter; Mick Couper; Lars Lyberg. The use of paradata to monitor and manage survey data collection. Section on Survey Research Methods – JSM 2010. (online at amstat.org), citing Couper, M. 1998. Measuring survey quality in a CASIC environment. In Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods of the American Statistical Association.
- ^ Fritz Scheuren. 2000. Macro and Micro Paradata for Survey Assessment. 1999 NSAF Collection of Papers. (online at urban.org), citing Couper, M. 1998. Measuring survey quality in a CASIC environment. In Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods of the American Statistical Association.
- ^ Mick P. Couper. 1998. Measuring survey quality in a CASIC environment. In Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods of the American Statistical Association. http://www.asasrms.org/Proceedings/papers/1998_006.pdf