Surveys of income are complicated by the sensitive nature of the topic. The problem researchers face is how to encourage participants to respond and to provide truthful responses in surveys. To correct biases induced by nonresponse or underreporting, we propose a two-stage multilevel randomized response (MRR) technique to investigate the true…

When tests are low stakes for examinees, meaning there are little to no personal consequences associated with test results, some examinees put little effort into their performance. To understand the causes and consequences of diminished effort, researchers correlate test-taking effort with other variables, such as test-taking emotions and test…

The quality of data in surveys is affected by response burden and questionnaire length. With an increasing number of questions, respondents can become bored, tired, and annoyed and may take shortcuts to reduce the effort needed to complete the survey. In this article, direct evidence is presented on how the position of items within a web…

The multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) format is an alternative to rating scales in which participants rank items according to how well the items describe them. Currently, little is known about how to detect careless responding in MFC data. The aim of this study was to adapt a number of indices used for rating scales to the MFC format and…

Stage fright is a natural and very common phenomenon that affects everyone who must present themselves in public. However, it has a negative impact on the health and voice emission of children and adolescents, which is why it is important to study and measure it. Unfortunately, there are no appropriate tools for examining public presentation…

Common indicator-based approaches to identifying careless and insufficient effort responding (C/IER) in survey data scan response vectors or timing data for aberrances, such as patterns signaling straight lining, multivariate outliers, or signals that respondents rushed through the administered items. Each of these approaches is susceptible to…

Item Response Theory models with varying thresholds are essential tools to account for unknown types of response tendencies in rating data. However, in order to separate constructs to be measured and response tendencies, specific constraints have to be imposed on varying thresholds and their interrelations. In this article, a multidimensional…

There has been a growing research interest in the identification and management of disengaged test taking, which poses a validity threat that is particularly prevalent with low-stakes tests. This study investigated effort-moderated (E-M) scoring, in which item responses classified as rapid guesses are identified and excluded from scoring. Using…

Response time has started to play an increasingly important role in educational and psychological testing, which prompts many response time models to be proposed in recent years. However, response time modeling can be adversely impacted by aberrant response behavior. For example, test speededness can cause response time to certain items to deviate…

Understanding the cognitive processes, skills and strategies that examinees use in testing is important for construct validity and score interpretability. Although response processes evidence has long been included as an important aspect of validity (i.e., "Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests," 1999), relevant studies are…

We propose some theoretical and empirical advances by supplying the methodology for analyzing the factors that influence two sensitive variables when data are collected by randomized response (RR) survey modes. First, we provide the framework for obtaining the maximum likelihood estimates of logistic regression coefficients under the RR simple and…

The factorial survey is an experimental design in which the researcher constructs varying descriptions of situations or individual persons (vignettes), which will be judged by respondents with regard to a particular aspect. Some researchers present vignettes in text format as short stories, others present the central information of vignettes in a…

To improve the validity of self-report measures, researchers should control for response style (RS) effects, which can be achieved with IRTree models. A traditional IRTree model considers a response as a combination of distinct decision-making processes, where the substantive trait affects the decision on response direction, while decisions about…

Social scientists have long agreed that satisficing behavior increases error and reduces the validity of survey data. There have been numerous reviews on detecting satisficing behavior, but preventing this behavior has received less attention. The current narrative review provides empirically supported guidance on preventing satisficing by…

In test security analyses, answer copying, collusion, and the use of a shared brain dump site can be detected by checking similarity between item response strings. The similarity, however, can possibly be contaminated by aberrant data resulted from careless responding or rapid guessing. For example, some test-takers may answer by repeating a…