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

ASKING THREATENING QUESTIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR 109
Choose the Appropriate Time Frame
All else equal, questions about events that have occurred in the past
should be less salient and less threatening than questions about current
behavior. Thus, for socially undesirable behavior, it is better to
start with a question that asks “Did you ever, even once . . . ,” rather
than to ask immediately about current behavior. Refer to Questions
2, 3, and 4 (about drinking beer, wine, and liquor) in Figure 3.8.
Other examples might be the following questions about delinquent
behavior. “Did you ever, even once, stay away from school without
your parents knowing about it?” “Did you ever, even once, take
something from a store without paying for it?”
After asking “Did you ever . . . ,” the interviewer then asks
about behavior in some defined period, such as the past year. As was
pointed out in the previous chapter, it is difficult for respondents to
remember accurately details on events in the distant past unless the
events are highly salient.
For socially desirable behavior, however, just the reverse strategy
should be adopted. It would be very threatening for respondents
to admit that they never did something like wearing a seat
belt or reading a book. Thus, the Gallup question on seat belt
usage—“Thinking about the last time you got into a car, did you
use a seat belt?”—is superior to the question “Do you ever wear seat
belts?” Such wording works only for fairly common behavior. For
less common behavior, an interviewer can obtain the same effect
by asking about the behavior over a relatively short time period.
Thus, instead of asking “Do you ever attend concerts or plays?” the
interviewer would ask “Did you attend a concert or play in the past
month?”
Make the Questions Less Threatening
As amusingly illustrated by Barton at the beginning of this chapter,
researchers have often attempted to load questions in order to make