Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

2.1 Formal standardisation
Fowler & Mangione (1990) represent one extreme in the debate over standardisation.
[t]he goal of standardization is that each respondent be exposed to the same question
experience, and that recording of the answers be the same, too, so that any differences in
the answers can be correctly interpreted as reflecting differences between respondents
rather than differences in the process that produced the answers (ibid: 14).
Most researchers would probably agree with this goal, this is indeed what any research project
would ideally want. What is the matter for discussion and what will be discussed is the va-
rious ways in which standardisation is achieved and if it is at all feasible through formal stan-
dardisation.
Fowler and Mangione list the four demands for a standardised interview of which the first
two (the ones dealing with posing questions as opposed to receiving and recording answers)
are:
1. Read the questions exactly as worded.
2. If the respondent’s answer to the initial question is not a complete and adequate
answer, probe for clarification and elaboration in a nondirective way; that is, in a
way that does not influence the content of the answer that results (ibid: 33).
A number of methods to ‘probe’ inadequate answers are given: The interviewer can repeat the
question in its entirety. The interviewer can ask a wh- question or similar; ‘how do you mean
that?’. Or, if the respondent explicitly expresses doubts about the meaning of the question, he
can tell the respondent that the question means ‘whatever it means to him’.
Standardised interviewing is best understood as a collaborate work between interviewer
and respondent in which common conversational rules are put aside for the benefit of rational-
ly measuring subjective truths about the respondent. If the respondent has a legitimate pro-
blem with how to apply a question to his experience (e.g., about the school system), the inter-
viewer may give an instruction such as: “Obviously there are many things that go into how
you feel about a school. The way a survey works is to ask people the same questions and let
them interpret and answer each question in a way that seems best to them. Let me read the
question again, and you give me the answer which from your perspective is the best answer to
this question as it is written” (ibid. p. 15). If people were without emotions and if no social
relations were involved in the interview, if for instance, no patronising voice was heard in the
89