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

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ASKING PSYCHOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS 247<br />

sive behaviors and tended to be more influenced by environmental<br />

factors (such as assortment size and packaging).<br />

Using Psychographic <strong>Questions</strong> to Segment Respondents<br />

In addition to using psychographic questions to segment consumers<br />

into potentially diagnostically useful groups, questions can be used to<br />

develop more general segments from which to examine trends and<br />

larger systemic patterns of behavior. One of the more widely known<br />

psychographic segmentation research programs (VALS, an acronym<br />

based on “values and lifestyles”) is conducted by SRI Consulting<br />

(Gunter and Furnham, 1992). Although many psychographic studies<br />

focus on measures and characteristics that are uniquely related to<br />

a topic of interest (reducing binge drinking, determining taste profiles,<br />

understanding who is most likely to give donations to a college),<br />

the VALS study is conducted across categories and attempts to show<br />

more general psychographic segments that can be used across a wide<br />

number of people and topics. <strong>The</strong>ir psychographic approach sorts<br />

people into one of eight different groups. A general description<br />

of people in each category is offered in Table 8.1.<br />

<strong>The</strong>se breakdowns are determined by cluster analyzing respondents’<br />

answers to questions regarding gender, age, education, and<br />

income along with the key psychographic questions noted in Table<br />

8.2. Each of the scaled questions is answered using one of four categories:<br />

(1) Mostly disagree, (2) Somewhat disagree, (3) Somewhat<br />

agree, (4) Mostly agree.<br />

A number of other syndicated lifestyle services use psychographic<br />

techniques to segment populations and predict trends. <strong>The</strong><br />

Yankelovich Monitor (Gunter and Furnham, 1992) is an annual<br />

survey of fifty trends relevant to consumer marketing, such as personalization,<br />

health orientation, meaningful work, responsiveness<br />

to fantasy, and an emphasis on winning.<br />

Another alternative to VALS is the List of Values (LOV),<br />

which is gaining favor among academics because it is in the public

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