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

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66 ASKING QUESTIONS calendar year, even if they are unable to remember the details of how or why the money was spent or obtained. The best explanation of this is that they obtained summary information for another purpose, such as tax records, or because they budgeted a specified amount of money for a vacation. If summary information is likely to be available from records and is all that is required, you should use that information instead of taking data for a much shorter time period and calculating the yearly amount. Ordinarily, however, you will be interested in both the summary data and the details of individual events. In this case, both summary questions and detailed questions for a short time period should be asked. Comparing the summary results with those obtained from extrapolating the data from the shorter period allows you to check the reliability of responses. How to Minimize Telescoping. An appropriate time period is also important if you are to minimize backward telescoping, or remembering events as happening more recently than they did. Suppose that a national sample of households are asked to report the amount of coffee they purchased in the past seven days and that this total is then compared with shipments of all coffee manufacturers or observed sales in retail outlets. These comparisons usually show that the amount reported is more than 50 percent higher than the amount manufactured and sold. What is happening is a process called telescoping. Telescoping results when the respondent remembers that the event occurred but forgets the exact date. In the past, most researchers were not concerned about telescoping because they believed that errors in the dates would be randomly distributed around the true date. However, recent research indicates that, as time passes, respondents are more uncertain about dates. As a result, respondents typically round their answers to conventional time periods, such as ten days ago, one month ago, or three months ago. The result of these two processes is to produce an overstatement of the reported events. Thus, an overstatement of coffee pur-
ASKING NONTHREATENING QUESTIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOR 67 chasing occurs because respondents who bought coffee two or three weeks ago are likely to report that they purchased it in the last ten days or two weeks. Telescoping Biases Increase with Short Time Periods. Unlike simple omissions, which increase with the length of the time period, telescoping biases increase as the time period between the interview and the event is reduced. The worst problems with telescoping are for very short periods—yesterday, the last three days, last week. The reason is evident. Respondents who misremember by only a day will overreport by 100 percent if asked about yesterday, will overreport by about 7 percent if asked about the past two weeks, and will overreport by only 1 percent if asked about the last three months. For longer periods, absolute deviations from the correct date increase, but the relative deviations become smaller. If the behavior is highly salient, so that the percentage of omissions is small, substantial overstatements will occur if the time period is too short. In this case the researcher’s desire for a longer time period to obtain more data coincides with the selection of a time period to obtain the most accurate recall. Since both telescoping and omissions are occurring simultaneously, and since the effects of time work in the opposite directions for these two forms of forgetting, there is some time period at which the opposite biases cancel and the overall levels of reported behavior are about right. (See Sudman and Bradburn, 1974, for fuller discussion.) For many kinds of behavior—such as grocery shopping, leisure activities, and routine medical care—this period appears to be between two weeks and one month. Even when an optimum time period is selected, however, the details of the behavior still may not be correct for particular individuals. Use Bounded Recall Bounded-recall procedures, as developed by Neter and Waksberg (1963, 1964, 1965), involve repeated interviews with the same
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Asking Questions The Definitive Gui
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Norman M. Bradburn Seymour Sudman B
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Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & S
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viii CONTENTS 12. Asking Questions
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Preface This book is a revised and
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PREFACE xiii trate some of the subt
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The Authors Norman M. Bradburn (Ph.
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Asking Questions
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Chapter One The Social Context of Q
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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF QUESTION ASKI
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Page 55 and 56: Chapter Two Asking Nonthreatening Q
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Page 63 and 64: Figure 2.4. Household Health Diary.
Page 75 and 76: Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census,
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Chapter Four Asking Questions About
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ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT ATTITUDES AN
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Chapter Five Asking and Recording O
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ASKING AND RECORDING QUESTIONS 153
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180 ASKING QUESTIONS 2. Consider wh
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182 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.2. Qu
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184 ASKING QUESTIONS Specific knowl
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186 ASKING QUESTIONS question. Anot
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192 ASKING QUESTIONS Resident Infor
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194 ASKING QUESTIONS It must be rec
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196 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.10. Q
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198 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.11. S
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200 ASKING QUESTIONS Figure 6.11. S
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202 ASKING QUESTIONS question indic
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204 ASKING QUESTIONS state or count
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206 ASKING QUESTIONS respondents wi
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208 ASKING QUESTIONS answers, most
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210 ASKING QUESTIONS on the Web sin
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Chapter Seven Asking Questions that
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ASKING QUESTIONS THAT EVALUATE PERF
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• Depends heavily on employee’s
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244 ASKING QUESTIONS make a particu
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246 ASKING QUESTIONS on demographic
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248 ASKING QUESTIONS Table 8.1. Eig
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250 ASKING QUESTIONS domain and rel
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252 ASKING QUESTIONS Seven Steps to
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254 ASKING QUESTIONS the frequency
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256 ASKING QUESTIONS The fourth ste
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258 ASKING QUESTIONS empty cells. I
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Chapter Nine Asking Standard Demogr
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ASKING STANDARD DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIO
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Chapter Ten Organizing and Designin
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ORGANIZING AND DESIGNING QUESTIONNA
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Fill- Ins Easily done with a Possib
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Chapter Eleven Questionnaires from
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QUESTIONNAIRES FROM START TO FINISH
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Chapter Twelve Asking Questions FAQ
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 325 tain you
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Do you own an IBM-type of PC? Yes
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 329 Ranking q
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 331 guish bet
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ASKING QUESTIONS FAQS 333 activitie
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336 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED RE
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348 GLOSSARY object. The term belie
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350 GLOSSARY are entered directly i
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352 GLOSSARY the sex of the respond
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354 GLOSSARY of an IBM card is a on
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356 GLOSSARY individual difference
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358 GLOSSARY overreporting, underre
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360 GLOSSARY because of illness or
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362 GLOSSARY response effect A gene
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364 GLOSSARY questionnaires list th
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Index A Ability, measuring, 197-202
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INDEX 369 Denver, 86; Community che
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INDEX 371 Library card ownership, 8
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INDEX 373 preferences, 167-168; thr
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Appendix A List of Academic and Not
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APPENDIX A 377 Phoenix, AZ 85003-17
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APPENDIX A 379 Fax: 310-206-4453 E-
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APPENDIX A 381 800 Florida Ave., N.
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APPENDIX A 383 E-mail: jbason@arche
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APPENDIX A 385 Phone: 312-996-5300
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APPENDIX A 387 Phone: 785-532-5510
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APPENDIX A 389 Center for the Study
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APPENDIX A 391 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-
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APPENDIX A 393 731 Oldfather Hall L
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APPENDIX A 395 New York Marist Coll
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APPENDIX A 397 Cornell University I
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APPENDIX A 399 225 South Main St. A
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APPENDIX A 401 121 University Pl. P
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APPENDIX A 403 South Dakota Busines
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APPENDIX A 405 Public Policy Resear
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APPENDIX A 407 E-mail: sesrc@wsu.ed
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APPENDIX A 409 England National Cen
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412 APPENDIX B PLEASE CIRCLE ONE CO
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414 APPENDIX B 14. Who purchased th
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416 APPENDIX B 23. What racial/ethn
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Faculty Retention Survey December 2
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2. Professional Life Important to y
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4. Environment Important to you Imp
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Appendix D Kinko’s: Open-ended Se
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