Designing Surveys for Multilingual Populations - Дизајнирање анкети за повеќејазични популации

In this episode of Total Survey Design, Dr. Azdren Coma explores what it takes to design surveys for populations that speak two or more languages. The episode explains why measurement equivalence (ensuring responses mean the same thing across languages) matters more than literal translation, and why the goal should be conceptual equivalence rather than word-for-word matching. Drawing on a personal case study of the 2021 North Macedonia Census, Azdren walks through real-world translation pitfalls, including untranslated Cyrillic dropdown menus and grammatically awkward translations from Macedonian into Albanian, and closes with practical takeaways for reducing cognitive burden and bias across language groups. This is the first of a two-part series on surveying multilingual populations.