Antaki1999

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Antaki1999
BibType ARTICLE
Key Antaki1999
Author(s) Charles Antaki
Title Interviewing persons with a learning disability: how setting lower standards may inflate well-being scores
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Medical EMCA
Publisher
Year 1999
Language
City
Month
Journal Qualitative Health Research
Volume 9
Number 4
Pages 437–454
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/104973239900900402
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

To be psychometrically valid, standard questions are meant to be delivered as they appear on the interview schedule—or by nonleading paraphrase—and the respondents’ answers exactly recorded. Yet, inspection of a set of transcripts of quality-of-life assessments of people with a learning disability (in North American terminology, mental retardation) shows massive deviation from this ideal. What is unsurprising is that interviewers frequently edit questions to address their interviewees’ limited cognitive competence. What is more pragmatically and interactionally interesting is that interviewers also redesign questions “sensitively” in ways that lower the social and personal criteria for a high score. Unofficially lowering the bar in this way might seem generous, but it constructs the respondent as impaired. It also means that respondents may end up getting high quality-of-life scores on unambitious questions one would not ask of people without a learning disability and that do not appear on the official questionnaire.

Notes