Asking Questions - The Definitive Guide To Questionnaire Design ...

94 ASKING QUESTIONS
drinkers—may. Figure 3.8 presents a series of questions, the first
asked by Gallup to determine whether respondents use alcohol,
how much respondents use alcohol, and how often. The Gallup
question is short, simple, and explicit. The NORC questions
formed a series in a longer questionnaire and were designed
to make it easier for respondents to recall and to admit their use
of alcoholic beverages. The progressive nature of the questioning
makes it easier for heavy drinkers to answer the questions without
avoiding the issue or underreporting their consumption
frequency.
Note that respondents are first asked whether they have ever
drunk alcoholic beverages or a specific beverage such as beer. At
this stage some respondents who have used and are using alcohol
will not want to admit it. If they deny alcohol use, they will not be
asked any questions about current behavior.
A comparison of the Gallup and NORC versions suggests that
the NORC version—which asked if respondents used beer in one
question, or wine in another question, or other specific alcoholic
beverages in other questions—is perceived as less threatening than
the Gallup version, which asked if respondents used any alcoholic
beverage. A higher percentage of respondents report using wine and
beer in the NORC version than report using any alcoholic beverage
in the Gallup question. This is probably because some respondents
who are willing to report using wine and beer may be unwilling to
report using alcoholic beverages because this term is perceived as
meaning hard liquor.
After respondents report that they have drunk beer, wine, or
liquor, it is effective to use long and open-ended questions to ask
respondents how much they drink—such as “When you drank beer,
how often did you drink it on average?”—without giving any indication
of a possible range of answers. When we compared these
open-ended questions with short closed-ended questions where
answer categories were given, we found that the quantities reported
on the long, open-ended form were more than double those on the