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

ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS 137
might want to know whether respondents are in favor of something
or not, but not whether they are opposed to it. In these instances
you would ask a simple, straightforward question, such as “Do you
favor the flat tax?” Although there is nothing wrong in principle
with asking a question like this with the implied alternative that
the respondent does not support a flat tax, the answer “no” is not so
informative as it might appear on the surface. A “yes” appears to
mean unambiguously that the respondent supports the tax, but a
“no” might mean that the respondent opposes it, or has no opinion
about it, or does not care one way or the other, or has mixed feelings
about it. (When the question is worded “Do you favor the flat
or not?” the level of support may change by a few percentage
points.)
Unipolar items, when rephrased into what appear to be their
opposites, often produce surprising results. A famous study by Rugg
(1941) showed that even such apparently opposite words as “allow”
and “forbid” can produce dissimilar results. Rugg asked matched
samples of respondents the questions “Do you think the United
States should allow public speeches against democracy?” and
“Do you think the United States should forbid public speeches
against democracy?” When the question was one of allowing public
speeches, 21 percent of the respondents supported free speech;
when the question was phrased that the United States should
forbid free speech, 39 percent denied that proposition and supported
free speech.
With this and other studies as a basis, it has become a generally
accepted practice to use both ends of the implied dimension to
phrase simple unipolar questions; for example, “Do you favor or
oppose the flat tax?” Respondents then choose either pro or con
positions or something in between. If an intensity dimension is
added to the question, respondents are asked to choose one or the
other end of the dimension with some gradations in between; for
example, “Do you strongly support, support somewhat, oppose
somewhat, or strongly oppose the flat tax?”