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

ASKING STANDARD DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS 271
Asking About One’s Occupation
Ask open-ended questions to learn more about a person’s occupation.
An example follows.
1. For whom did you work?
2. What kind of business or industry was this?
(Need not be asked if obvious from Q.1.)
3. What kind of work were you doing?
4. What were your most important activities or duties?
Obtaining accurate information on a person’s occupation is a
complex task requiring coding of four open-ended questions. Since
this coding requires substantial training and experience, the alternative
of having either the respondent or interviewer code occupation
is a serious mistake because it leads to frequent and often
serious misclassifications. We believe that if occupation is important
to your research, you should ask all the questions and code
them carefully. If occupation is only one of many dependent variables
you will be studying, you might well be better off to eliminate
it entirely.
We give some examples of why the questions are needed.
Strictly speaking, Question 1 is not needed, but most people when
asked about their work first report for whom they work. Suppose in
response to Question 1, the respondents say they work for Busey
(which is a bank). This is insufficient to identify the business. The
next question would then determine that Busey is a bank. If the
response to Question 1 had been Busey Bank or the University of
Illinois or the U.S. Army, then Question 2 would not be needed.
Even with Questions 1 and 2 one does not know if the respondent
is a bank manager, a teller, a guard, or a janitor.
Questions 3 and 4 are also insufficient by themselves. For example,
laborers’ work varies with the type of industry in which they are