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

ASKING THREATENING QUESTIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR 97
short, closed-ended form. In Questions 4 and 5, an additional effort
was made to reduce the threat by asking respondents to use their
own words when discussing liquor and drunkenness. This procedure
also appeared to improve reporting, but not so much as the use of
long, open-ended questions.
Sexual Activity
Figure 3.9 presents a series of self-administered questions from the
NORC study on sexuality (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and
Michaels, 1994). The researchers examined responses controlling
for interviewer evaluations of respondents’ frankness and comprehension
of the questions and saw no differences. Of course, this
does not mean that all sexual activities were accurately reported. It
has frequently been noted that interviewers cannot really tell when
respondents are not answering truthfully. Nevertheless, the use of
self-administered forms for these really threatening questions almost
certainly reduced threat.
Note that the frequency questions give answer categories rather
than simply asking for an open answer on how many times or with
how many partners. Respondents who found the question sensitive
or had trouble remembering might have used a middle answer to
indicate what researchers thought was the most likely possibility.
Nevertheless, by far the most common answer given for the number
of sexual partners was one.
Again, it can be seen that the careful sequencing of these questions
provides two advantages in improving reporting accuracy.
First, it differentiates and clarifies the activities being investigated,
so as to not cause confusion over the “definition” of sex. Second, it
also leads up to the more uncomfortable questions by asking the
more general questions to begin with.