Chapter 16: Item Review Methods

Item review is a critical step in survey construction. What we mean when we write the survey item may or may not be how other people interpret it. The wording may be confusing or ambiguous to others even though it is clear to us. Item review methods are used to determine whether our items have flaws and, if so, whether the flaws make a difference in how people respond. Flaws can be simple such as incorrect grammar and punctuation or more complex such as use of culturally laden, biased, or inappropriate and confusing wording. Item review methods are used with draft versions of survey items to identify problem items so we can fix them before administering the survey to our population. Item review methods are also used after survey administration to identify items that did not function as intended so we can exclude them from our analyses or qualify results due to poor item performance.