Response Quality in Survey Research with Children and Adolescents: The Effect of Labeled Response Options and Vague Quantifiers

Instead of using their parents or caretakers as informants, children are increasingly the principal informants about their own experiences, perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors (Scott, ). As a consequence, it is becoming an important question how well one can ask survey questions of young children and adolescents. Concerning adults, there is a substantial body of empirical evidence that shows effects of both respondent characteristics (especially cognitive abilities) and question characteristics (especially question difficulty) on response quality (e.g.