Event history calendars and question list surveys: a direct comparison of interviewing methods.

The research reported in this article provides the first direct experimental comparison between Event History Calendar (EHC; N=309; 84.4 percent response rate) and standardized state-of-the-art question list (Q-list; N=307; 84.1 percent response rate) interviewing methodologies. Respondents and 20 interviewers were randomly assigned to EHC and Q-list interviews that were conducted via telephone in the spring of 1998. All interviews asked for retrospective reports on social and economic behaviors that occurred during the calendar years of 1996 and 1997. Using data from the same respondents collected 1 year earlier on events reported during 1996 as a standard of comparison, the quality of retrospective reports on 1996 events from the 1998 administration of EHC and Q-list interviews was assessed. In comparison to the Q-list, the EHC condition led to better-quality retrospective reports on moves, income, weeks unemployed, and weeks missing work resulting from self illness, the illness of another, or missing work for these reasons in combination with other ones. For reports of household members entering the residence, and number of jobs, the EHC led to significantly more overreporting than the Q-list. Contingent on additional research that examines a wider range of reference periods and different modes of interviewing, the EHC may become a viable and potentially superior method to the Q-list in the collection of self-reported retrospective information.

The structure of autobiographical memory and the event history calendar: potential improvements in the quality of retrospective reports in surveys.

This paper reviews the literature on the structure of autobiographical memory and points to the use of event history calendars as a survey methodology that reflects this structure. Autobiographical memory structure is characterised as an hierarchical network that includes extended, summarised, and specific events, and that permits retrieval of past events through multiple pathways that work top-down in the hierarchy, sequentially within life themes that unify extended events, and in parallel across life themes that involve contemporaneous and sequential events. Traditional survey questions tend to segment related aspects of autobiographical events from one another, and do not reflect the interrelatedness of events as indicated within the structure of autobiographical memory. In contrast, event history calendars do promote sequential and parallel retrieval within the autobiographical memory network. By reflecting the structure of autobiographical memory, the use of event history calenders has considerable potential in assisting respondents to reconstruct their personal pasts more completely and accurately, maximising the quality of retrospective reports.

Forward telescoping: the question matters.

Forward telescoping, the reporting or dating of events as being more recent than they actually were, is often observed in surveys and produces inaccurate data. We believe that some forward telescoping occurs when the question format allows people to respond without extensive retrieval of temporal information concerning the target events. We collected two types of data. The first, the type usually collected by survey researchers, involved visits to medical doctors. As is common in survey research, the actual dates of the events were not verifiable. The second type involved students' participation in laboratory research studies. Here, the actual dates were verifiable. We demonstrate that modifying the questions asked produced differences in the amount of forward telescoping in participants' responses.

Memory impairment and source misattribution in postevent misinformation experiments with short retention intervals.

The four experiments reported here provide evidence that (1) misleading postevent suggestions can impair memory for details in a witnessed event and (2) subjects sometimes remember suggested details as things seen in the event itself. All four experiments used recall tests in which subjects were warned of the possibility that the postevent information included misleading suggestions and were instructed to report both what they witnessed in the event and what was mentioned in the postevent narrative. Recall of event details was poorer on misled items than on control items, and subjects sometimes misidentified the sources of their recollections. Our results suggest that these findings are not due to guessing or response biases, but rather reflect genuine memory impairment and source monitoring confusions.

Incongruous item generation effects: a multiple-cue perspective.

In a series of studies, generation effects were obtained under encoding conditions designed to induce incongruous, unrelated item generation. Experiments 1 and 2, using free- and cued-recall measures, respectively, provided evidence that this unrelated generation effect was due to response-specific processing. Experiment 3 demonstrated a lack of relation between free recall and indices of clustering. A preliminary protocol study suggested that Ss generate multiple items in their search for appropriate unrelated responses. In Experiments 4 and 5, conditions designed to produce more extensive multiple generations demonstrated enhanced free recall. These results supported a multiple-cue account of facilitated recall for incongruous item generation. The multiple-cue perspective is consistent with traditional conceptualizations of memory, such as the principle of congruity, and contemporary distinctions between cue-target relational and item-specific processing.

Failure of interpolated tests in inducing memory impairment with final modified tests: evidence unfavorable to the blocking hypothesis.

Whether interpolated recall or recognition tests will enhance the impairing influence of postevent misinformation on a final modified recognition test of original event information was examined in two experiments. Both used short retention intervals. Postevent information led to differences between control and misled conditions on interpolated tests, but no differences were found on modified tests. Arguments are presented that discredit the blocking hypothesis as a potential mechanism responsible for impairment found with postevent misinformation experiments that use short retention intervals. Instead, various rejection mechanisms are favorably assessed.

Influences of misleading postevent information: misinformation interference and acceptance.

Because of the biasing nature of retrieval tests, evidence that the introduction of misleading postevent information will impair the memory for an original event has recently been in dispute. In two experiments, a retrieval test sensitive to both biasing effects of misinformation (misinformation acceptance) and influences of the misinformation on memory (misinformation interference) was used. Both experiments demonstrated misinformation acceptance, and one of the experiments suggested that misinformation interferes with the ability to remember the original event. Two misinformation interference hypotheses are evaluated; they suggest that the misinformation may have either impaired memory or led to confusion regarding what had occurred during the event.