Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Interviewing: Unstructured and Semistructured 243
and sometimes it doesn’t, and there’s a lot of research on when it might be a
problem. Zipp and Toth (2002), for example, analyzed data from a household
survey in Britain and found that when the spouses are interviewed together,
they are much more likely to agree about many things—like who does what
around the house—than when they are interviewed separately. Apparently,
people listen to each other’s answers and modify their own answers accordingly,
which puts on a nice, unified face about their relationship.
As you’d expect, there is a social desirablity effect when a third party is
present. Casterline and Chidambaram (1984) examined data from 24 developing
countries in the World Fertility Study and found that women in those countries
are less likely to admit using contraception when a third party is present
at the interview. Anthropologists face this situation a lot: trying to get people
to talk about sensitive topics and assuring them of privacy, but unable to find
the privacy for an interview.
On the other hand, Aquilino (1993) found that when their spouse is in the
room, people report more marital conflict than when they are interviewed
alone. They are also more likely to report that they and their spouse lived
together before marriage if their spouse is in the room. Perhaps, as Mitchell
(1965) suggested 40 years ago, people own up more to sensitive things like
this when they know it will be obvious to their spouse that they are lying.
Seems like a good thing to test. (For more on the third-party-present effect,
see Blair [1979], Bradburn [1983], Hartmann [1994], Aquilino [1997], Pollner
and Adams [1997], T. W. Smith [1997], Aquilino et al. [2000], and Boeije
[2004]).
Threatening Questions
In general, if you are asking someone a nonthreatening question, slight
changes in wording of the question won’t make much difference in the
answers you get. Peterson (1984) asked 1,324 people one of the following
questions: (1) How old are you? (2) What is your age? (3) In what year were
you born? or (4) Are you 18–24 years of age, 25–34, 35–49, 50–64, 65 or
older? Then Peterson got the true ages for all the respondents from reliable
records.
There was no significant difference in the accuracy of the answers obtained
with the four questions. (However, almost 10% of respondents refused to
answer question 1, while only 1% refused to answer question 4, and this difference
is significant.)
On the other hand, if you ask people about their alcohol consumption, or
whether they ever shoplifted when they were children, or whether they have
family members who have had mental illness, or how many sexual partners
they’ve had, then even small changes in the wording can have significant