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

108 ASKING QUESTIONS
drinking question. If you were particularly interested in shoplifting,
you might use the following order (adapted from Clark and
Tifft, 1966).
Did you ever, even once, do any of the following:
Commit armed robbery? Yes
No
Break into a home, store, or building? Yes
No
Take a car for a ride without the owner’s knowledge?
Yes No
Take something from a store without paying for it?
Yes No
In a more general sense, the threat of individual questions is
also determined by the general context of the questionnaire. Thus,
a questionnaire that deals with attitudes toward alcoholism is more
threatening than a questionnaire that deals with consumer expenditures.
Consequently, respondents may be more willing to
admit that they use alcohol when the question is one of a series of
questions about consumer expenditures or leisure-time activities or
lifestyles.
It can sometimes be difficult for a researcher to decide whether
to use questions that are not directly related to the threatening topics
being studied but are included only to embed the threatening
questions. These added questions increase the length of the questionnaire
and the cost of the study. We suggest, however, that judicious
use of such questions can increase respondent cooperation
and data quality with only small increases in cost. An artful investigator,
when faced with the need to embed threatening questions,
can choose additional questions that contribute to the richness of
the research, even if these questions are not of primary interest. In
other words, you can use other questions to take some of the emphasis
off of your primary interest in a given survey.