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

174 ASKING QUESTIONS
Pictures
The advent of Web-based surveys greatly increases the opportunity
to use pictures in a questionnaire. Complex opinions, particularly
those respondents might have difficulty keeping in mind through
simply hearing them, can be presented pictorially. This method
enables you to present two or more opinions simultaneously, and
the format allows respondents to consider their own opinions in
relation to the questions. In this way, respondents can imagine
questions as being concretely expressed by individuals, rather than
in the abstract.
If you wished to consider the effect of the characteristics of the
person expressing the opinion as well as the opinion itself, you
could use the pictorial form to indicate the opinion, the sex, or the
ethnic identity of the person holding the opinion. Of course, pictorial
stimuli would be necessary if attitudes about a product’s appearance,
style, or packaging were being investigated.
Card Sorting
When you want to rate a large number of items or make very difficult
ratings in a face-to-face interview, card sorting is a useful
device. Here the respondents sort cards into piles according to some
set of instructions, as in Figure 5.7. Although using cards increases
the amount of material interviewers must carry with them, most
interviewers are generally enthusiastic about using such materials
because card tasks give respondents something active to do during
the course of the interview. Researchers report that a card task
breaks up the routine of the interview and effectively motivates
respondents to answer questions further on in the interview.
The card-sorting task can be extended beyond sorting on one
dimension. NORC successfully used this method in a study where
respondents’ opinions about possible political events were rated on
two dimensions: (1) the respondents’ beliefs about the probability