Check the Phone Book: Testing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Recall Aids for Surveys of Personal Networks

• Main Author: Hsieh, Yuli Patrick
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2014
• Subjects: Behavioral psychology; Communication; Individual & family studies
• ISBN: 1321017367; 9781321017366

Social scientists have studied personal networks for decades to understand the implications of one's interpersonal environment for behavioral and psychological well-being, as well as opinion and attitude formation. Researchers in these areas mainly employ the "name generator" procedure (Burt, 1984) to collect self-reported information about who comprises survey respondents' personal networks. However, self-reports on personal networks present a data quality challenge. The accuracy of the recalled information due to the heavy response burden imposed on respondents prevents researchers from properly assessing the size of respondents' personal networks. Thus far, although a few techniques for reducing the respondent burden have been proposed, there is little work addressing the use of memory aids to improve recall accuracy for personal network data collection. This study develops two recall aids for the name generator procedure and empirically tests their utility. A survey experiment was administered to 447 U.S. college students randomly assigned to three conditions to gather information about their personal networks. In the experimental conditions, the questionnaire encouraged respondents to consult the actual records that they keep in the contact directories provided by various communication technologies (such as the "phone book" stored in a mobile phone). The results suggest that, as compared to participants in the control condition, respondents who were prompted to consult their devices were indeed able to provide more personal contacts that they know and more information about them without a substantial quality decline (e.g., missing responses) for subsequent questions in the survey. On average, respondents in all conditions appeared to expend a similar level of cognitive effort to report individual contacts, suggesting that recall aids were able to help respondents report more information without an increase in burden. Additionally, respondents in the experimental conditions were able to report more weak ties than their counterparts, suggesting that the proposed recall aids were able to elicit a broader range of contacts with whom respondents had discussed important matters. This study concludes with the implications of ICT recall aids for personal network research and questionnaire design for "name generator" network data collection.