Vignette (survey)

See also: Vignette (psychology)

A vignette is a short description of one or more hypothetical characters or situation. They are used in quantitative surveys or in qualitative studies that pretest surveys.

Survey researchers use anchoring vignettes to correct interpersonally incomparable survey responses because respondents from different cultures, genders, countries, or ethnic groups understand survey questions in different ways.[1][2] Vignette wordings are experimentally controlled, and different versions of the vignette may be randomly assigned to different survey respondents who are then asked close-ended questions to rate their reactions.[3]

Vignettes are also used as part of cognitive interviewing and focus groups, or in conjunction with respondent debriefing to pretest survey questions by examining the participants' survey-relevant decisions.[4][5] They allow researchers to test multiple situations while minimizing the challenge of recruiting participants who correspond to each specific situation. After presenting the vignette, participants are probed for their interpretation of terms and their thought process with regard to the survey questions.[6][7]

  1. ^ "Anchoring Vignettes Overview". gking.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-17.
  2. ^ Hu, Mengyao (2019). "Using anchoring vignettes to correct for differential response scale usage in 3MC surveys". Advances in comparative survey methods: Multinational, multiregional, and multicultural contexts (3MC). Wiley Publishing. pp. 181–201.
  3. ^ Patrick, Vargas (2008). "Vignette Question". In Lavrakas, Paul (ed.). Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods. Sage Publishing. p. 948. doi:10.4135/9781412963947. ISBN 9781412918084.
  4. ^ Willis, Gordon (2005). Cognitive interviewing: A tool for improving questionnaire design. Sage. p. 146. ISBN 9780761928041.
  5. ^ Aizpurua, Eva (2020). Sha, Mandy; Gabel, Tim (eds.). Pretesting methods in cross-cultural research (Chapter 7) in The essential role of language in survey research. RTI Press. pp. 129–150. doi:10.3768/rtipress.bk.0023.2004. ISBN 978-1-934831-23-6.
  6. ^ Martin, Elizabeth (2004-06-25). "Vignettes and Respondent Debriefing for Questionnaire Design and Evaluation". In Presser, Stanley; Rothgeb, Jennifer M.; Couper, Mick P.; Lessler, Judith T.; Martin, Elizabeth; Martin, Jean; Singer, Eleanor (eds.). Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questionnaires (1 ed.). Wiley. doi:10.1002/0471654728. ISBN 978-0-471-45841-8.
  7. ^ Sha, Mandy (2016-08-01). "The Use of Vignettes in Evaluating Asian Language Questionnaire Items". Survey Practice. 9 (3): 1–8. doi:10.29115/SP-2016-0013.