Exploring the Response Process of Culturally Differing Survey Respondents with a Response Style

Abstract

This article presents a mixed methods approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze why the four largest minorities in the Netherlands—Turks, Moroccans, Antilleans, and Surinamese—respond differently to items treating cultural topics. First, we conducted latent class factor analyses on a large data set to assess whether these minorities respond differently to the items and to distinguish respondents with different types of response styles. These analyses indicate that group differences between minorities can partially be explained by response styles and that some respondents prefer to select the extreme categories whereas others prefer adjacent categories. Then, we selected interviewees from the same cultural groups and classified them according to the response profiles derived from the quantitative study. The qualitative study shows that extreme responders use different strategies to answer survey questions than do adjacent responders.

Keywords

mixed methods latent class factor analysis cognitive interviews response styles

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