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

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120 ASKING QUESTIONS Does it include civil disturbances or rebellions? Does it include defense against natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes, or against electrical grid failures or nuclear power plant explosions? Since many questions contain such ambiguities, extensive pretesting is necessary if you are to develop good standardized questions that eliminate misleading, noisy ambiguities. Unfortunately, because of budget limitations and a belief that question wording is a simple matter that does not require great skill or experience, many researchers do not devote the needed time and effort to pretesting questions. For the pretest phase, Belson (1968) has suggested a technique now known as cognitive interviewing, whereby respondents are asked to restate, in their own words, what they think the meaning of a question to be. This technique is analogous to back translating when questions are translated into another language. Another technique of cognitive interviewing is to ask respondents to verbalize the thought processes they go through when they are answering questions. After using cognitive interviewing, Belson pessimistically concluded that even with well-developed, simplified questionnaires, many respondents do not understand a question in the way it is intended by the researcher. Lack of clarity is particularly common among attitude objects that are frequently discussed in the media, such as “welfare,” “big business,” “civil rights,” and “profits.” For example, in one study discussed by Payne (1951), more than one-third of the population did not know what “profits” meant. Of the remainder, a substantial number had an idea of profits that was quite different from that used by companies who reported them. Fee (1979) investigated the meanings of some common political terms used in public opinion studies. Adopting a variant of Belson’s method, she asked respondents to elaborate on their understanding of particular terms, such as “energy crisis.” She found that at least nine different meanings were attached to the term “energy crisis.” Similarly, the term “big government” elicited four distinct connotations or images: (1) “welfare,” “socialism,” and “overspending”; (2) “big business” and “gov-
ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS 121 ernment for the wealthy”; (3) “federal control” and “diminished states’ rights”; and (4) “bureaucracy” and “a lack of democratic process.” The images tended to be held by people with differing political orientations or levels of education and were related to different attitudes. Without knowing which of the images respondents held, a researcher might not be able to interpret responses to questions about “big government.” There is no reason to believe that the situation has changed dramatically since then. In short, ambiguity pervades questionnaires. Pretesting and experiments with question wording can resolve some of the ambiguity with regard to respondents’ understanding of questions; but they can do so only if you have a clear notion of what you are trying to find out. If you do not know what you want to know, respondents are unable to help. The Three Components of Attitudes The terms opinion and attitude are not clearly differentiated from one another. In general, opinion is most often used to refer to views about a particular object such as a person or a policy, and attitude is more often used to refer to a bundle of opinions that are more or less coherent and are about some complex object. One might have an opinion about a particular proposal to change a Medicare provision and a more general attitude about Medicare. Opinions are more often measured by single questions; attitudes tend to be measured by a set of questions that are combined on the basis of some measurement model. Attitudes are thought of as having three components: cognitive, evaluative, and behavioral components. The cognitive component consists of a set of beliefs about the attitude object (such as “How healthy is pizza on the following dimensions?”). The evaluative component consists of evaluation of the object; for example, do respondents think it is good or bad or do they like it or not (“Do you like pizza as a food?”). The behavioral component is related to respondents’ attitudes in relation to their actions (“How many
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Asking Questions The Definitive Gui
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Norman M. Bradburn Seymour Sudman B
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Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & S
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viii CONTENTS 12. Asking Questions
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Preface This book is a revised and
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PREFACE xiii trate some of the subt
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The Authors Norman M. Bradburn (Ph.
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Asking Questions
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Chapter One The Social Context of Q
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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF QUESTION ASKI
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Chapter Two Asking Nonthreatening Q
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ASKING NONTHREATENING QUESTIONS ABO
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Figure 2.4. Household Health Diary.
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Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census,
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ASKING AND RECORDING QUESTIONS 171
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180 ASKING QUESTIONS 2. Consider wh
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182 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.2. Qu
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184 ASKING QUESTIONS Specific knowl
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186 ASKING QUESTIONS question. Anot
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192 ASKING QUESTIONS Resident Infor
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194 ASKING QUESTIONS It must be rec
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196 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.10. Q
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198 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.11. S
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200 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.11. S
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202 ASKING QUESTIONS question indic
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204 ASKING QUESTIONS state or count
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206 ASKING QUESTIONS respondents wi
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208 ASKING QUESTIONS answers, most
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210 ASKING QUESTIONS on the Web sin
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Chapter Seven Asking Questions that
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ASKING QUESTIONS THAT EVALUATE PERF
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• Depends heavily on employee’s
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244 ASKING QUESTIONS make a particu
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246 ASKING QUESTIONS on demographic
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248 ASKING QUESTIONS Table 8.1. Eig
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250 ASKING QUESTIONS domain and rel
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252 ASKING QUESTIONS Seven Steps to
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254 ASKING QUESTIONS the frequency
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256 ASKING QUESTIONS The fourth ste
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258 ASKING QUESTIONS empty cells. I
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Chapter Nine Asking Standard Demogr
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ASKING STANDARD DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIO
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Chapter Ten Organizing and Designin
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ORGANIZING AND DESIGNING QUESTIONNA
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Fill- Ins Easily done with a Possib
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Chapter Eleven Questionnaires from
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QUESTIONNAIRES FROM START TO FINISH
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Chapter Twelve Asking Questions FAQ
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 325 tain you
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Do you own an IBM-type of PC? Yes
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 329 Ranking q
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 331 guish bet
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 333 activitie
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336 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED RE
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348 GLOSSARY object. The term belie
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350 GLOSSARY are entered directly i
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352 GLOSSARY the sex of the respond
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354 GLOSSARY of an IBM card is a on
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356 GLOSSARY individual difference
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358 GLOSSARY overreporting, underre
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360 GLOSSARY because of illness or
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362 GLOSSARY response effect A gene
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364 GLOSSARY questionnaires list th
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Index A Ability, measuring, 197-202
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INDEX 369 Denver, 86; Community che
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INDEX 371 Library card ownership, 8
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INDEX 373 preferences, 167-168; thr
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Appendix A List of Academic and Not
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APPENDIX A 377 Phoenix, AZ 85003-17
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APPENDIX A 379 Fax: 310-206-4453 E-
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APPENDIX A 381 800 Florida Ave., N.
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APPENDIX A 383 E-mail: jbason@arche
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APPENDIX A 385 Phone: 312-996-5300
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APPENDIX A 387 Phone: 785-532-5510
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APPENDIX A 389 Center for the Study
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APPENDIX A 391 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-
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APPENDIX A 393 731 Oldfather Hall L
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APPENDIX A 395 New York Marist Coll
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APPENDIX A 397 Cornell University I
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APPENDIX A 399 225 South Main St. A
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APPENDIX A 401 121 University Pl. P
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APPENDIX A 403 South Dakota Busines
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APPENDIX A 405 Public Policy Resear
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APPENDIX A 407 E-mail: sesrc@wsu.ed
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APPENDIX A 409 England National Cen
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412 APPENDIX B PLEASE CIRCLE ONE CO
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414 APPENDIX B 14. Who purchased th
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416 APPENDIX B 23. What racial/ethn
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Faculty Retention Survey December 2
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2. Professional Life Important to y
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4. Environment Important to you Imp
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Appendix D Kinko’s: Open-ended Se
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