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

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184 ASKING QUESTIONS<br />

Specific knowledge, however, as measured in Question 2 was<br />

much lower; 40 percent of respondents did not know if any foods<br />

sold at the supermarket were produced through biotechnology. This<br />

illustrates that there is a much larger gap between one’s general<br />

knowledge or awareness of an issue and specific content-level knowledge.<br />

We can very easily and wrongly assume that someone is<br />

knowledgeable about something they are only vaguely aware of. If<br />

it is critical to distinguish between the two, more specific questions<br />

need to be asked.<br />

Knowledge of Authors<br />

Figure 6.4 asks respondents about their knowledge of authors. This<br />

question followed questions dealing with book reading in general<br />

(Gallup, 1999). Although general statistics like this have some<br />

value in certain contexts, what is potentially of more interest is to<br />

see how author recognition differed across different population segments.<br />

We might think that books toward the end of the list (such<br />

as Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Melville) would be more<br />

Figure 6.4. <strong>Questions</strong> About Authors.<br />

1. Now, if you can, please tell me the name of the author for the following<br />

books.<br />

% Correct<br />

<strong>The</strong> Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss) 72<br />

Huckleberry Finn (Twain/Clemens) 48<br />

<strong>The</strong> Shining (King) 42<br />

<strong>The</strong> Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) 29<br />

<strong>The</strong> Firm (Grisham) 26<br />

A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 18<br />

A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) 18<br />

<strong>The</strong> Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 15<br />

Moby Dick (Melville) 12<br />

Crossings (Steel) 5<br />

Source: Gallup, 1999.

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