Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Structured Interviewing I: Questionnaires 275
once a month,’’ and limit the list of activities to no more than seven. Then
introduce a question with a totally different format, to break up the monotony
and to keep the respondent interested.
Packaging is best done in self-administered questionnaires. If you use these
kinds of lists in a face-to-face interview, you’ll have to repeat the scale for at
least the first three items or activities you name, or until the respondent gets
the pattern down. This can get very tiring for both interviewers and respondents.
8. If you want respondents to check just one response, then be sure to make the
possible responses to a question exhaustive and mutually exclusive. This may
mean including a ‘‘don’t know’’ option.
Here is an example (taken from a questionnaire I received) of what not to
do:
How do you perceive communication between your department and other departments
in the university? (check one)
There is much communication
There is sufficient communication
There is little communication
There is no communication
No basis for perception
The ‘‘no basis for perception’’ response took care of making the item
exhaustive. You can always make questionnaire items like this one exhaustive
by giving respondents the option of saying some variant of ‘‘don’t know’’—
like ‘‘no basis for perception.’’ Some researchers feel that this just gives
respondents a lazy way out—that people need to be made to work a bit. If
there is a good chance that some of your respondents really won’t have the
information you ask for, then I think the ‘‘don’t know’’ option is too important
to leave out. In consumer preference surveys, though, where you actually give
someone a taste of a cracker and ask them to tell you if they like it, the ‘‘don’t
know’’ option is a bad idea.
The problem for me on this item was that I wanted to check both ‘‘little
communication’’ and ‘‘sufficient communication.’’ For me, at least, these two
categories were not mutually exclusive—I didn’t think there was a lot of communication,
and I wasn’t at all bothered by that—but the author of the survey
asked me to ‘‘check one.’’ (For more on the ‘‘don’t know’’ option in surveys,
see Lam et al. 2002.)