"It’s not me, it’s you: Individual factors in survey response"

When respondents ‘agree’ to an item in a survey, we assume that they are all agreeing to the same thing. Previous research, however, suggests that this is not the case, and that respondents interpret items very differently (Hardy & Ford, 2012). Respondents either interpret the syntax of sentences differently (sentential miscomprehension) or have differing definitions of word (lexical miscomprehension). One key question is whether certain individuals are more likely to miscomprehend items, effectively making miscomprehension a stable trait. To examine this question we conducted an exploratory study, using Hardy and Ford’s (2012) model for diagnosing miscomprehension in combination with personality and demographic measures. We replicate the findings of previous research and find that evidence for individuals to have a propensity to miscomprehend. We do not find any meaningful correlation between the personality variables used and miscomprehension. We do, however, find an intriguing age related effect, which...