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Can you tell people's cognitive ability level from their response patterns in questionnaires?
Stefan Schneider1,2,3, Raymond Hernandez4, Doerte U Junghaenel4,5,6
1Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science, and Center for Economic & Social Research, University of Southern California, 635 Downey Way, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-3332, USA. schneids@usc.edu.
Behavior Research Methods
|March 26, 2024
Summary
Researchers explored if questionnaire response patterns could indicate general cognitive ability. Findings suggest that analyzing response errors, particularly on complex questions, provides a reliable indirect measure of cognitive function in adults.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Survey Methodology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Questionnaires are ubiquitous in survey research.
- Cognitive ability influences performance on cognitive tasks.
- Two phenomena link cognitive ability to task performance: the worst performance rule and the task complexity hypothesis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if questionnaire response patterns can serve as an indirect indicator of general cognitive ability.
- To determine if the worst performance rule and task complexity hypothesis apply to questionnaire responses.
Main Methods:
- Conceptualized questionnaire items as cognitively demanding tasks.
- Utilized a graded response model to calculate "response error" scores for each item.
- Analyzed data from 102 items across 21 questionnaires from a large, nationally representative sample of adults aged 50+.
Main Results:
- Found significant associations between cognitive ability and largest response error scores, supporting the worst performance rule.
- Observed stronger links between cognitive ability and response errors for more complex questions, supporting the task complexity hypothesis.
- A latent variable of response errors on complex items correlated .50 with a latent cognitive ability factor.
Conclusions:
- Response patterns in questionnaires, specifically largest response errors on complex items, can provide a rough indicator of general cognitive ability.
- These findings suggest a novel method for assessing cognitive function within survey research.
- Results were robust, replicated across independent samples and multiple assessment waves.
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