We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Language Barriers: Causal Evidence of Linguistic Item Bias in Multilingual Surveys.
- Authors
Velez, Yamil Ricardo; Saavedra Cisneros, Ángel; Gomez, Jose
- Abstract
Accurate estimation of public opinion in diverse countries requires survey questions that operate similarly across languages. We leverage 3,026 bilingual Latinos across four studies to investigate how language-of-administration affects the measurement properties of political science scales. We randomly assign bilinguals to English and Spanish survey forms and uncover item bias, also known as differential item functioning (DIF), across items measuring identity, attitudes, and political knowledge. We examine whether translation errors are the culprit, yet find that perceived translation quality does not predict the magnitude of DIF and questions with minimal text exhibit item bias. Our findings suggest otherwise similar Latinos may be estimated to possess different levels of knowledge, attitude strength, and group identification due to survey language selection. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of multilingual surveys and the study of racial and ethnic politics more broadly.
- Subjects
COMMUNICATION barriers; POLITICS &; ethnic relations; POLITICAL knowledge; POLITICAL science; PERCEIVED quality; PUBLIC opinion; LEXICAL access
- Publication
Political Behavior, 2024, Vol 46, Issue 2, p1213
- ISSN
0190-9320
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11109-023-09869-8