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

288 ASKING QUESTIONS
C. During the last few years, has your financial situation been
getting worse, has it stayed the same, or has it been getting
better?
There is no clear-cut rule to indicate whether it is better to have
the middle category actually in the middle of the question or at the
end. A decision here depends on your general feeling about how
easily the question reads. In some situations, it seems more natural
to have the middle category in the middle. In this question, it seems
somewhat better to us to have the contrast between “getting better”
and “getting worse” together (version A).
Order of Response Categories
A B C
Getting better . . . 1 1 3
Getting worse . . . 2 3 1
Stayed the same . . . 3 2 2
Don’t know 8 8 8
Code from Low to High. Although it may not matter whether you
ask the middle category in the middle position of the question or
not, having the numerical codes arranged in the same order as the
response categories given in the questionnaire poses a potential
problem. For analytical purposes these response categories are
regarded as running from better to worse in a continuum, with
“stayed the same” as a middle position. Yet if the categories are
given numerical precodes, which will then be used in the analysis,
and if these precodes follow the order of presentation of the categories,
the middle category may turn out to be the highest number.
If you have access to computer programs that produce tabulations
with the response categories labeled, there is less chance of confusion
during the analytical stage. However, if the numerical code
should print out without the response label—or, more important, if
you wish to combine answers to this question that are ordered from
better to worse or good to bad—some sort of recoding will have to