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

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ORGANIZING AND DESIGNING QUESTIONNAIRES 291<br />

salient, although it may also be an item that was cued by earlier<br />

parts of the questionnaire. (See the discussion in Chapter Five.)<br />

With this coding scheme, it is necessary to look only in a single<br />

location to determine the proportion of respondents who think that<br />

reading is one of the most important things a school can teach.<br />

Fitting <strong>Questions</strong> on the Page or Screen<br />

A question, including all its answer categories, that can fit on a single<br />

page should never be split between two pages or two screens.<br />

<strong>The</strong> interviewer or respondent is likely to assume that the question<br />

has ended at the end of the page and thus will answer on the basis<br />

of an incomplete question. If the question and its answer categories<br />

do not fit comfortably on the page, they should be moved to the<br />

next page and the amount of space between earlier answers increased.<br />

In computer-assisted interviewing, the standard procedure<br />

is to put only one question at a time on the screen.<br />

Occasionally, questions may require more than one page because<br />

the list of possible answers is long, such as brand names for a<br />

product purchase, or country of origin for parents or grandparents.<br />

For such questions, interviewers need to receive special instructions<br />

on the number of pages or screens that the question covers. Such<br />

multipage questions or screens would not be appropriate for selfadministered<br />

questionnaires except with well-educated and professional<br />

respondents. In this case, there is usually a separate sheet<br />

with all the categories, and respondents are asked to enter the<br />

proper code on the main questionnaire. For a computer-assisted<br />

interview, respondents are asked to click on the selected response.<br />

When the list of answer categories is long, the answers must be<br />

arranged in a logical sequence, most typically in alphabetical order.<br />

A final note of caution: a long question with a number of subparts<br />

should not be followed by a short question at the end of the<br />

page or screen. Such a question is frequently omitted in error. Care<br />

should be taken with how the questions are placed.

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