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

296 ASKING QUESTIONS
of questions being asked or not asked, depending on the answer to
a previous question. In paper interviews, the complexity of such
skips is limited by interviewer memory. Even with simple skips,
significant interviewer errors occur, with questions being skipped
that should not have been skipped, and questions being asked that
should not have been asked.
In computer-assisted interviewing, the researcher programs the
skips into the computer as part of the questionnaire design process.
The instructions may be very complex involving answers from several
earlier parts of the interview that are far removed from the current
question. The computer executes the skips perfectly each time,
so that the respondent is never asked a question that should not be
asked and never misses a question that should be asked. This benefit
was an initial motivation for computer-assisted interviewing and
is still a major reason for its use.
Randomization of Answer Choices or Question Order. As was
pointed out in Chapter Five, the position of an answer, whether first,
last, or in the middle, as well as the order of a question in a group of
related questions, may impact how the question is answered. A common
procedure for measuring the effect of the position of an answer
or the order of questions is to randomize positions and orders. Full
randomization can easily be done with computer-assisted interviewing,
whereas paper questionnaires are typically limited to two or to
a small number of alternative versions.
Importing and Updating Information from Earlier in the Interview.
Computer-assisted interviews allow for information from earlier
in the interview to be automatically available in later questions.
For example, as part of the household enumeration, you may obtain
the first name of all household members. Suppose one of the adults
is named Harry. A later question may then ask “Did Harry go to the
emergency room of a hospital in the past year?” If the answer is
“yes,” the follow-up question might be “What was the reason for
that visit?” The answer given might be “He broke his leg.”