An overview of the scales' characteristics for 10 well-established face-to-face social science surveys

Abstract

Many studies were conducted to help researchers designing high quality surveys. Testing theoretical considerations, these studies create empirical evidence that should serve for guidance. However, we often come across surveys that do not follow those literature recommendations. While this might be due to the trade-offs between data quality, comparability (across time or countries), and costs, in this paper, we provide information about the scales used in practice by 10 well-established social science face-to-face surveys. We found that: 1) agree/disagree scales are used in all 10 surveys but in a maximum of 15.7% of the items; 2) most attitude or belief questions use between two and six answer categories; 3) while some surveys use few grids, others use them commonly. 4) check-all-that-apply is very little used in all surveys; 5) fixed reference points are often used but not for all the answer categories for which they would be possible. Such an overview can help researchers by shedding light on the current survey practice in key social science surveys. Overall, it suggests researchers should not simply copy questions from these surveys when designing their own questionnaire; instead they should first evaluate their quality.