Abstract
Veenhoven (Happiness in nations, subjective appreciation of life in 56 nations, 1946–1992 (Studies in social-cultural transformation, 2), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Risbo, 2003, Quality of life in the new millennium: ‘Advances in quality-of-life studies, theory and research’, Part 2: Refining concepts and measurement to assess cross-cultural quality-of-life, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008) has called for continued statistical and survey research to support pooling survey response data from different surveys, with an eye to eventual comparative studies or research synthesis using meta-analysis. Data pooling across various social surveys is made complicated because there is no universally agreed-upon response format (response rating scales) for commonly used survey questions. Two widely used solutions to this problem are transforming the survey response data using either the Linear Stretch or Percentage of Scale Maximum transformations. In line with Veenhoven and his colleagues (de Jonge et al., Diversity in survey questions on the same topic: Techniques for improving comparability, Springer, New York, 2017) and others, we are critical of these two commonly used transformation methods. Using mathematical analysis, we show how these two most commonly used transformation methods are inadequate because they are not well defined; therefore their unique interpretation comes from social convention. Ironically, if one needs to rely on social convention to make these transformations interpretable, it would have been more reasonable to agree to use the same response format from the start and save ourselves all this trouble. The chapter closes with a description of an alternative approach based on a family of promising multivariate statistical and psychometric methods, of which the statistical methods described in de Jonge, Veenhoven, and Kalmijn, are an instantiation.
Running Head: Survey Comparability & Measurement Models
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Zumbo, B.D., Woitschach, P. (2021). A Critique of the Conventional Methods of Survey Item Transformations, with an Eye to Quantification. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) The Pope of Happiness. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 82. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53779-1_30
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