Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: Declining response rates to telephone surveys have prompted survey organizations to be creative and open-minded concerning implementing new survey procedures and considering alternative data collection strategies. One strategy that may be helpful to slow or reverse the trend in declining response rates is to offer sample members a variety of ways to respond to the questionnaire–essentially allowing the respondent to choose the mode with which he/she is most comfortable. For example, adding a mail option, a Web option, or both to a telephone survey creates an alternative method for obtaining responses from willing participants, thereby allowing more resources to be devoted to reluctant sample members and late responders.

This paper describes some of the practical issues encountered in designing and implementing a multimode survey and presents data on the impact of using multiple modes on data quality. The National Survey of Recent College Graduates (NSRCG) is a biennial survey of science and engineering bachelor’s and master’s degree recipients sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Conducted as a CATI survey since 1974, in 2003 the NSRCG was converted to a multimode survey using mail, Web, and CATI.

In this paper, we discuss some of the challenges faced in converting the NSRCG to a multimode survey, such as revising question wording and response formats to suit each mode, managing multiple instrument versions, and maintaining a common database. We then examine measures of data quality by mode, including item nonresponse and response error (as measured by rates of editing). We conclude with lessons learned and suggestions for researchers implementing a multimode design.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: In the demand for health care, price is a central determinant, yet the modeling of out-of-pocket prices is poorly understood. This paper studies the multimodality of out-of-pocket prices using a mixture of Gaussians that allows for the estimation of modal shifts and variation around the modes. We describe how prices may vary continuously due to market fluctuations, and may shift between modes because of contracts, search costs, bulk purchasing, and price discrimination. A better understanding of the endogeneity of out-of-pocket prices not only improves our ability to identify the demand for health care, these models better characterize the financial burden of poor health. To illustrate this point, we examine 1992-2002 data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, specifically the bimodality of medication prices among seniors.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines whether media use distinguishes between relationship types and the association between media use and supportive message content. Participants provided a supportive e-mail they received and reported media used with the e-mail sender. Results indicated five clusters of media use and five clusters of supportive message types with the distribution of these clusters differing significantly from chance. Findings suggest that the intentionality required by a medium may influence media use more than richness.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the United Nations’ attempt to strengthen citizen participation in the global governance of information and communication policy by convening an explicitly multistakeholder World Summit on the Information Society. However, one of the biggest questions that immediately emerges is: “Who gets to sit in the seats reserved for the non-state participants of these multistakeholder dialogues, particularly, “in whose name” are the civil society actors speaking, and to what degree are they representing their constituencies? The theoretical framework for this paper draws from the literature on deliberative democracy, international regime theory, and technology diffusion as it asks three grand tour research questions: (1) What is the structure of multistakeholder participation in the WSIS?; (2) Is there a difference between WSIS stakeholder groupings in their participation in transnational policy networks? (3) Could participation of developing countries and transnational civil society organizations be strengthened with the introduction of the socio-technical infrastructure of a policy collaboratory? Data are drawn from three sources: (1) an international survey (N=322) of WSIS participants; (2) content analysis of public e-mail archives; and (3) participant observation. We find that while the structure of WSIS favors developed country governments and powerful private sector actors. Also, FTF communication dominates, with only limited use of ICTs other than e-mail. The civil society structures that have emerged also favor certain types of discussions and favor certain types of civil society actors. Finally, we report on the findings from our two-year experiment designed to introduce advanced collaboration practices into the WSIS civil society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article outlines an approach for automatically extracting behavioral indicators from video, audio, and text and explores the possibility of using those indicators to predict human-interpretable judgments of involvement, dominance, tenseness, and arousal. We utilized two-dimensional spatial inputs extracted from video, acoustic properties extracted from audio, and verbal content transcribed from face-to-face interactions to construct a set of multimodal features. Multiple predictive models were created using the extracted features as predictors and human-coded perceptions of involvement, tenseness, and arousal as criterion measures. The predicted perceptions were then used in classifying truth and deception. Though the predicted values for perceptions performed comparably to human-coded perceptions, their contribution to detecting deception was less successful. Thus, the extracted multimodal features were used to predict deception directly. Classification accuracy was substantially higher than typical human deception detection performance.