Autobiographical Memory and the Validity of Retrospective Reports

360 Pages·1994·13.727 MB·English

by  Norbert Schwarz, Seymour Sudman (auth.), Norbert Schwarz, Seymour Sudman (eds.)

Autobiographical Memory and
the Validity of Retrospective Reports
Norbert Schwarz Seymour Sudman
Editors
Autobiographical Memory
and the Validity of
Retrospective Reports
With 24 Illustrations
Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris
Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Norbert Schwarz Seymour Sudman
Professor Professor
Institute for Social Research Survey Research Laboratory
University of Michigan University of Illinois at
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 USA Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801-3883 USA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports /
[edited by] Norbert Schwarz, Seymour Sudman.
p. cm.
Papers presented at a conference.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN -13:978-1-4612-7612-8
1. Autobiographical memory-Congresses. I. Schwarz, Norbert, Dr.
phil. II. Sudman, Seymour.
BF378.A87A884 1993
153.1 '2-dc20 93-31775
Printed on acid-free paper.
© 1994 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994
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Production managed by Hal Henglein; manufacturing supervised by Jacqui Ashri.
Camera-ready copy prepared by the editors.
987654321
ISBN -13:978-1-4612-7612-8 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4612-2624-6
001: 10.1007/978-1-4612-2624-6
Acknowledgments
The conference on which the present volume is based was supported by the
Walter SteBner Endowment in the Department of Business Administration of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, by the Zentrum fUr Umfragen,
Methoden und Analysen (ZUMA) in Mannheim, Germany, and by grant SWF
0044-6 from the Bundesminister fUr Forschung und Technologie to Norbert
Schwarz. In addition, preparation of the present volume was supported by a
transatlantic cooperation grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung to
Norbert Schwarz, Norman M. Bradburn, Hans-J. Hippler, and Seymour Sud
man.
We also wish to thank the staff of the Robert Allerton Park and Conference
Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for facilitating the
interaction of the participants with their delightful midwestern cooking, and at
the social hours and coffee breaks. We wish to thank Mary A. Spaeth for her
careful editing and for formatting the material into camera-ready copy. Finally,
we thank all of the conference participants for the fine chapters that they sub
mitted and for their useful comments on each other's initial drafts that helped
improve the final versions.
Ann Arbor, Michigan Norbert Schwarz
Urbana, Illinois Seymour Sudman
April 1993
Contents
Acknowledgments ........................................... v
Contributors ................................................ xi
Introduction and Overview
Norbert Schwarz and Seynwur Sudman 1
PART I. PERSPECTIVES ON RETROSPECTIVE REPORTS
Chapter 1
Autobiographical Memory and Survey Research
William F. Brewer ......................................... 11
Chapter 2
The Validity of Retrospective Reports as a Function of the
Directness of Retrieval Processes
Douglas 1. Herrmann 21
Chapter 3
Accuracy, Truth, and Meaning in Autobiographical Reports
Kurt W. Back .............................................. 39
Chapter 4
On Authenticating and Using Personal Recollections
Michael Ross and Roger Buehler .............................. 55
Chapter 5
Mfect and Memory in Retrospective Reports
Mahzarin R. Banaji and Curtis Hardin ......................... 71
viii Contents
PART II. RETROSPECTIVE REPORTS OF BEHAVIORS
Chapter 6
The Recall of Physical Pain
Peter Salovey, William J. Sieber,Jared B. Jobe, and
Gordon B. Willis ........................................ 89
Chapter 7
The Effects of Estimation Strategies on the Accuracy of
Respondents' Reports of Cigarette Smoking
Barbara Means, Gary E. Swan, Jared B. Jobe, and
James L. Esposito ....................................... 107
Chapter 8
Validity of Reports of Long-Term Dietary Memories:
Data and a Model
Albert F. Smith and Jared B. Jobe 121
Chapter 9
Errors of Experience: Response Errors in Reports about Child
Support and Their Implications for Questionnaire Design
Nora Cate Schaeffer ..................................... 141
Chapter 10
Judgments of Behavorial Frequencies: Memory Search
and Retrieval Strategies
Geeta Menon .......................................... 161
Chapter 11
On Providing Population Data To Improve Respondents'
Estimates of Autobiographical Frequencies
Edward Blair and Kathleen Williamson ....................... 173
Chapter 12
Retrospective Reports: The Impact of Response Formats
Norbert Schwarz, Hans-J. Hippler, and
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann ................................ 187
PART III. EVENT DATING AND TIME ESTIMATION
Chapter 13
Telescoping and Temporal Memory
Norman M. Bradburn, Janellen Huttenlocher, and Larry Hedges 203
Contents ix
Chapter 14
The Impact of Differing Memory Domains on Event-Dating
Processes in Self and Proxy Reports
John J. Skowronski, Andrew L. Betz, Charles P. Thompson,
W.RichardWalker,andLauraShannon ........................ 217
PART IV. COMPARISONS OF SELF AND PROXY REPORTS
Chapter 15
Self and Proxy Reports of Everyday Events
David J. Mingay, Steven K. Shevell, Norman M. Bradburn,
and Carl Ramirez .......................................... 235
Chapter 16
The Effect of Participation Level on Reports of Behavior
and Attitudes by Proxy Reporters
Seymour Sudman, Barbara Bickart, Johnny Blair, and
Geeta Menon.... ... . . . .. . ..... . . . . ... . . . ... . .... . ... .. .... 251
Chapter 17
Reconstruction of Relationship Memories:
A Mental Models Approach
Diane Holmberg and John G. Holmes .......................... 267
PART V. MEMORIES OF THE PAST AND JUDGMENT OF
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Chapter 18
Biasing Effects of Retrospective Reports on
Current Self-Assessments
Leslie F. Clark, James E. Collins II, and Susan M. Henry ........... 291
Chapter 19
Reconstructing Social Change through Retrospective Questions:
Methodological Problems and Prospects
Karl-Heinz Reuband ........................................ 305
Chapter 20
Collective Memories in the United States and Lithuania
Howard Schuman, Cheryl Rieger, and Vladas Gaidys .............. 313
References ................................................. 335
Contributors
Introduction
Norbert Schwarz is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, and Research Scientist in the Institute for Social Research. At
the time of the conference on which this volume is based, he directed the
Cognition and Survey Research Program at the Zentrum fUr Umfragen,
Methoden und Analysen (ZUMA) in Mannheim, Germany. His research
interests focus on human judgmental processes, in particular the interplay
of affect and cognition, and the application of social cognition research to
survey research.
Seymour Sudman is Walter H. Stellner Distinguished Professor of Marketing,
Professor of Business Administration and of Sociology, and Deputy Direc
tor and Research Professor at the Survey Research Laboratory, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Business from
the University of Chicago. He is the author, co-author, or editor of over
15 books and 100 articles dealing primarily with survey methodology and
response effects in surveys. His current research interests are related to
cognitive aspects of proxy reporting in surveys.
Chapter 1
William F. Brewer has appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign as Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beck
man Institute, Research Professor in the Institute of Communications
Research, and Senior Scientist at the Center for the Study of Reading. He
carries out research in the areas of knowledge representation, human
memory, text structure, and knowledge acquisition.
Chapter 2
Doug/as J. Herrmann is Director of the Collection Procedures Research
Laboratory, and Chief of the Behavioral Science Research group in the
xii Contributors
Office of Survey Methodology Research, at the Bureau of Labor Statis
tics. He obtained his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in 1972 in Experimental
Psychology at the University of Delaware. He taught at Hamilton College
(Clinton, New York) until 1989. His current work investigates (a) ways to
facilitate autobiographical and other kinds of memory performance and
(b) the psycholinguistic bases of question comprehension.
Chapter 3
Kurt W. Back is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus at Duke University. He
obtained a Ph.D. in group psychology at MIT and has worked on applica
tions of social psychology in sociopsychology, population control, hous
ing, the life course, and social movements. Among his books are Beyond
Words: The Story of Sensitivity Training and the Encounter Group Move
ment and Family Planning and Population Control: The Challenge of a
Successful Movement.
Chapter 4
Michael Ross received his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is Professor of Psychology at the Uni
versity of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research interests are wide rang
ing, but he has an abiding fascination with autobiography and memory.
Roger Buehler obtained his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in psychology at the Uni
versity of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is currently Assistant Professor
at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. His
research interests include autobiographical memory, social cognition, and
the psychology of prediction.
Chapter 5
Mahzarin R. Banaji is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology
at Yale University. Her research examines systems of affect, self, stereo
typing and prejudice. She is also interested in the theoretical analysis of
method.
Curtis Hardin is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at Yale University.
His research interests include the role of social identity processes in af
fect, memory, social judgments, and sense of self.
Chapter 6
Peter Salovey received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale Univer
sity, where he is Associate Professor and contributing to both the social/
personality and clinical psychology programs. His major research interest
is the function of human emotion, especially how emotions direct cogni
tion, motivate social behavior, and color close relationships. He has re
cently been concerned with the influence of emotion on perceptions of
Contributors xiii
health, illness, and physical pain and has published findings in this area in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
William J. Sieber is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Yale Uni
versity and is presently an intern at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Med
ical Center. His research interests concern the expression of physical
symptoms and feeling states. His doctoral research concerns individual
differences in attentional focus on somatic sensations versus emotional
aspects of stressful events. His publications include articles on the influ
ence of mood on self-focused attention in Cognitive Therapy and Re
search.
Jared B. Jobe is Director of the Collaborative Research Program at the Na
tional Laboratory for Collaborative Research in Cognition and Survey
Measurement at the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville,
Maryland, where he has been since 1987. He directs an extramural pro
gram and conducts research in cognitive psychology and health surveys.
He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in psychology
from the University of Oklahoma in 1972, 1973, and 1976, respectively,
specializing in learning and memory. With E. F. Loftus, he co-edited in
1991 a special issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology, devoted to cog
nition and survey measurement.
Gordon B. Willis is a survey statistician at the National Center for Health
Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he has worked since 1987 in the
Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory developing and testing health
survey questionnaires. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern Uni
versity in 1985. His research program has focused on the application of
cognitive psychology to early childhood mathematics education, the devel
opment of giftedness in adolescence, and survey methodology.
Chapter?
Barbara Means is Director of the Education and Human Services Research
Program at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Her research
focuses on practical applications of cognitive psychology to areas such as
surveys and education and training. Her publications have appeared in Ap
plied Cognitive Psychology and in Measurement error in surveys, edited
by P. P. Biemer et al. She earned her Ph.D. in educational psychology at
the University of California, Berkeley.
Gary Swan is Director of the Health Sciences Program, SRI International.
After receiving his Ph.D. in psychology from the State University of New
York at Stony Brook in 1978, he joined the staff at SRI International and
has since been conducting research in two primary areas: substance use
(tobacco and alcohol) and aging (cardiovascular disease and premature