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

6 ASKING QUESTIONS
the survey. Surveys of this type, sometimes called frugging (fundraising
under the guise) surveys, are often primarily intended to
raise funds rather than to collect survey information. The American
Association for Public Opinion Research has labeled fundraising
surveys deceptive and unethical, but they are unfortunately not
illegal.
Wording questions to obtain a desired answer is not the only
type of problem that besets survey authors. Sometimes questions are
simply complex and difficult to understand. Consider this example
from a British Royal Commission appointed to study problems of
population (cited in Moser and Kalton, 1972): “Has it happened to
you that over a long period of time, when you neither practiced
abstinence, nor used birth control, you did not conceive?” This
question is very difficult to understand, and it is not clear what the
investigators were trying to find out.
The Nuances of Politically Charged Issues
Yet even when there are no deliberate efforts to bias the question,
it is often difficult to write good questions because the words to
describe the phenomenon being studied may be politically charged.
The terms used to describe the area of concern may be so politically
sensitive that using different terms changes the response percentages
considerably. A question asking about welfare and assistance
to the poor from the 1998 General Social Survey (Davis, Smith,
and Marsden, 2000) produced quite different opinions.
We are faced with many problems in this country, none of
which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I am going to
name some of these problems, and for each one I’d like you
to tell me whether you think we’re spending too much money
on it, too little money, or about the right amount. Are we
spending too much money, too little money or about the
right amount on . . .