Report
A Noncontributory Pension Program for Older Persons in Yucatan, Mexico
Apr 7, 2014
In an evaluation of a pension program in Yucatan, researchers found that low literacy, language barriers, and cultural biases hindered older adult respondents' ability to answer mortality-expectation questions and experimented with new ways of asking the questions. They tried variations of the questions with and without visual aids. They report here what they learned for constructing subsequent survey items.
Development and Testing of Survey Measures
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Individual subjective forecasts of one's own mortality or survival, referred to as mortality expectations, can affect economic decisions, such as consumption and saving. Such measures may be particularly useful when evaluating social programs serving older populations or otherwise analyzing populations with potentially high mortality rates. In an evaluation of a pension program in Yucatan, researchers found that low literacy, language barriers, and cultural biases hindered older adult respondents' ability to answer mortality-expectation questions and experimented with new ways of asking the questions. The initial version of the questions used a ruler with a numeric scale representing a percentage chance of living five more years. Researchers tried direct and indirect versions of the questions, versions with possible answers being contingent on answers to previous questions, and versions incorporating use of visual aids, and combinations of these variations. Through cognitive interviewing, they studied how respondents understood, processed, and responded to the survey items. They then used what they learned to revise the survey measures. The visual aids tested were the original numeric-scale ruler, a sliding ruler, stones, and stick figures. With their survey population, they had the most success using the stick figures for conditional questions and the stones for direct questions.
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Identifying Measures of Subjective Mortality
Chapter Three
Initial Subjective Mortality Questions Implemented
Chapter Four
Developing and Testing Measures of Subjective Mortality Expectations
Chapter Five
Conclusion
The research described in this report was made possible with funding from the government of the state of Yucatan, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA), the RAND Center for the Study of Aging, RAND Labor and Population, and the Center for Latin American Social Policy (CLASP).
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