Translation of Survey Items on Country Specific Programs: The Case of Translating U.S. Educational Level Questions into Spanish.

摘要

Various studies have shown the difficulty of translating concepts related to country-specific programs for use in surveys. Questions about educational attainment are an example of a concept that is very difficult to translate for use with respondents from different national origins. This is particularly the case for Spanish-speaking respondents in the United States, who come from a variety of different countries where educational systems are different not only from the U.S. system but from each other as well. This paper presents results from the cognitive testing of the Spanish translation of educational level questions in the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). Two iterative rounds of cognitive testing were conducted on a series of educational level questions with 46 Spanish-speaking respondents from 11 different countries. We found that Spanish speakers interpreted many of the educational level categories differently from what was intended.