ESRA 2027 sessions by theme
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The Tricky Ones: Linguistic Challenges in Question Wording and Translation |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Alisú Schoua-Glusberg (Research Support Services Inc.) |
| Coordinator 2 | Dr Brita Dorer (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) |
| Coordinator 3 | Dr Patricia Hadler (SHARE BERLIN Institute (SBI)) |
| Coordinator 4 | Dr Tobias Weber (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) |
Session Details
To ensure data quality, survey questions should be easy to understand and interpreted consistently and as intended by the researcher. In practice, achieving these goals can be challenging, particularly when operationalizing complex concepts. In cross-cultural survey projects, questionnaire translation and adaptation add another layer of complexity.
Despite well-established guidelines for questionnaire design and translation, every questionnaire development and translation process involves concepts, question formats, or substantive domains that are difficult to operationalize, translate, and harmonize across languages and cultural contexts. Such challenges may threaten measurement quality by affecting validity, reliability, and cross-cultural equivalence.
Examples for such linguistic challenges in question design and translation are manifold. One recurring challenge concerns response scales, which can strongly influence respondents’ interpretations and response behavior. Another example is maintaining a consistent approach to implementing gender-neutral or gender-inclusive wording strategies. Other challenges include translating complex occupation questions used for ISCO coding, or adapting concepts that are embedded in specific institutional or cultural contexts, such as palliative care, education, or social welfare systems. Decisions need to be made about the language versions to provide: Should minority languages be covered? Are questionnaires in English a useful option? To what extent does providing survey instruments in easy or plain language enhance inclusivity of survey projects? How can AI and LLMs support these goals?
This session invites contributions that examine specific linguistic challenges encountered in questionnaire design, adaptation, and translation, as well as the strategies used to address them and translation topics in a broader sense. We welcome both methodological research and applied case studies from questionnaire development, pretesting, and translation teams as well as contributions that reflect on practical experiences and lessons learned. Contributions reflecting on the implications of these challenges for measurement equivalence, cross-national comparability, and overall survey quality are particularly encouraged.
