Forgetting From Episodic Memory

Posted by Franz

Response process: Retrieval
Forgetting From Episodic Memory

Interference

The longer the time period in question (e.g. 1 year vs. 1 month) the more likely other similar events will have occurred
Hard to distinguish details of one event from the others
Tend to blend into single generic memory

Decay

The more time has passed since events occurred, the weaker the memory
Forgetting most rapid in period immediately after event experienced
Forgetting continues after as many as 50 years(!)

Events vs. Self knowledge

Posted by Franz

Response process: Retrieval
Events vs. Self knowledge

Menon (1993) asked respondents to judge the frequency of mundane activities, e.g. snacking, washing one’s hair, etc.
Activities occurred on regular or irregular schedule and were similar or dissimilar
Predicted most use episodic recall and least use of rates when events distinctive (dissimilar) and irregular; least use of episodic recall and most use of rates when events similar and regular.

cited article:
Menon, G. (1993). The effects of accessibility of information in memory on judgments of behavioral frequencies. Journal of Consumer Research, 20, 431‐440.
http://www.ejcr.org

from:
Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys
University of Michigan
https://www.coursera.org/course/questionnairedesign

Concept Specification: A Common Problem

Posted by Franz

Concept Specification: A Common Problem:

“The research objectives of many studies are surprisingly ill-defined.

Asking a researcher what exactly should be measured by a question for which purpose frequently elicits vague answers — if not different answers from different researchers involved in the same project!”

Scharwz, N. (1997), Questionnaire Design: The Rocky Road from Concepts to Answers,
in Lyberg et al. Survey Measurement and Process Quality, New York: Wiley

from:
Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys
University of Michigan
https://www.coursera.org/course/questionnairedesign

Conversational interviewing: Views of Meaning

Posted by Franz

Conversational interviewing: Views of Meaning

I. Rationale for standardized wording is that meaning resides in words
– If respondents get same words, get same meaning
– Message model (Akmajian et al, 1990)
– Pretesting can remove most comprehension errors

II. Alternative: meaning rests on collaboration
– Participatns must talk about meaning to be sure listener interprets as speaker intends, i.e,, utterance must be grounded
– Collaborative theory (e.g. Clark, 1996)
– Pretesting cannot anticipate mapping ambiguities for the many respondents in a diverse sample; clarification needed IN INTERVIEW.

from:
Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys
University of Michigan
https://www.coursera.org/course/questionnairedesign

Measurement error: Variance and Bias

Posted by Franz

Measurement error: Variance and Bias

Questions that increase variance:

“How safe do you feel in the area where you live?”

Questions that increase bias:

“Would you say the government should force people to have saving accounts?”
“Were you aware that fur traders use methods including drowning and bludgeoning in order to save money and avoid damage to the fur?”

Dartboard analogy

accurate, precise

cited by:
Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys
University of Michigan
https://www.coursera.org/course/questionnairedesign

NLP
Stanford, June 2012
https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp
http://online.stanford.edu/course/natural-language-processing

Precision of the clinical exam
https://www.med.emory.edu/EMAC/curriculum/diagnosis
sensitivity
specificity

NLTK book > 3.3 Precision and Recall
http://www.nltk.org/book/ch06.html

franzcalvo

Questionnaire Design MOOC

Forgetting From Episodic Memory

Events vs. Self knowledge

Concept Specification: A Common Problem

Conversational interviewing: Views of Meaning

Measurement error: Variance and Bias