QDET CONFERENCE A SUCCESS IN CHARLESTON!!

The International Conference on Questionnaire Development, Evaluation, and Testing Methods (QDET) was held November 14-17 in Charleston, South Carolina at the Embassy Suites Convention Center Hotel. The 338 conference attendees represented 23 countries and six continents. There were 32 sessions with 22 invited papers and 54 contributed papers. In addition there were 15 poster presentations.

SRMS funds provided QDET the ability to offer 12 Conference Fellowships to students and to people from countries typically underrepresented at these conferences. Fellowships were granted to persons from South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, Slovenia, Italy and Korea as well as to graduate students in the U.S. A grant received from the National Science Foundation also allowed QDET to offer an additional 10 Conference Fellowships to U.S. citizens, most of whom were graduate students.

Norman Bradburn was the keynote speaker and his talk focused on "The Future of Questionnaire Research." He emphasized the need for the field to keep abreast of how to maximize utility of technological advances and the increasing challenges the field faces with multicultural, multilanguage issues and the benefits, which might be gained through incorporating more sociolinguistics into survey research.

The QDET invited papers were included in a monograph which was published in 2004. In addition, the Journal of Official Statistics (JOS) produced a volume comprised of selected contributed papers. The papers are available in the archive. Search "September 2004" to quickly find the QDET papers. All available contributed papers are posted here . In addition, conference photos are available on the conference website.

From the conference evaluation forms, it is apparent that QDET attendees are interested in future conferences focusing on topics such as questionnaire design, Web Surveys, and multicultural issues related to survey research. SRMS eagerly awaits conference proposals on such topics!