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

244 ASKING QUESTIONS
make a particular decision about a product, person, or ideology”
(Demby, 1989, p. 21).
Perhaps the most obvious use of psychographic research is to
draw portraits or profiles of target groups. Yet lifestyle and personality
characteristics that are specific to certain people or behaviors
must be defined and measured in order to be useful to researchers.
For instance, it would be relevant to some researchers to identify a
health-conscious segment, or it might be of interest to a clothing
company to identify a fashion-conscious segment. In other words,
personality and lifestyle characteristics, as with all measurement,
must be defined by your objectives.
Checklist of Major Points
1. Asking psychographic questions can be used to help predict
preferences and behavior.
2. Psychographic questions can be useful in developing segments
that reflect people’s thinking and behavior instead
of simply their demographic makeup.
3. Psychographic segments can be used for three broad purposes:
(1) examining predicted relationships, (2) creating
personality clusters, or (3) creating generic segments for
the purposes of trend-related research.
4. One way to generate psychographic measures is to use previously
validated psychological constructs. Another approach
is to generate ad hoc items relevant to the specific behavior
of interest.
5. When developing psychographic measures, enlist the insights
of experts and inside sources and conduct in-depth interviews
with consumers.
6. The most useful questions are AIO statements that are
measured on 7- or 9-point scales anchored with “Strongly
Disagree” and “Strongly Agree.”