Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Structured Interviewing I: Questionnaires 277
agreement with both parts of it or just one part? Which part? How can you
tell? You can’t. That’s why it’s a bad question.
13. Don’t put false premises into questions. I once formulated the following question
for a survey in Greece: ‘‘Is it better for a woman to have a house and cash
as a dowry, or for her to have an education and a job that she can bring to the
marriage?’’ This question was based on a lot of ethnographic work in a community,
during which I learned that many families were sinking their resources into
getting women educated and into jobs and offering this to eligible bachelors as
a substitute for traditional material dowries.
My question, however, was based on the false premise that all families
respected the custom of dowry. The question did not allow respondents to state
a third alternative—namely, that they didn’t think dowry was a custom that
ought to be maintained in any form, traditional or modern. In fact, many families
were deciding to reject the dowry custom altogether—something that I
missed for some time because I failed to pretest the item (see Pretesting, below).
14. Don’t take emotional stands in the wording of questions. Here’s an example of
the sort of question you see on surveys all the time—and that you should never
ask: ‘‘Should the legislature raise the drinking age to 21 in order to reduce the
carnage among teens on our highways?’’ Another example of a bad question is:
‘‘Don’t you agree with the President when he says . . . ?’’
15. When asking for opinions on controversial issues, specify the referent situation
as much as possible. Instead of asking: ‘‘Do you approve of abortion?’’ ask:
‘‘Under what conditions do you approve of abortion?’’ Then give the respondent
as exhaustive a list of circumstances as possible to check. If the circumstances
are not exclusive (rape and incest are not necessarily exclusive, for
example), then let respondents check as many circumstances as they think
appropriate.
Translation and Back Translation
All the tips given here about writing good survey questions continue to
apply when you are working in another culture. They are just a lot more difficult
to implement because you have to deal with phrasing questions properly
in another language as well. The best way to deal with this is through back
translation (Brislin 1970; Werner and Campbell 1970).
Back translation is the standard method for adapting social and psychological
measurement scales. Look up ‘‘back translation’’ in a database like Psyc-
INFO and you’ll find over a hundred examples. First, write any questionnaire
in your native language, paying attention to all the lessons of this chapter.
Then have the questionnaire translated by a bilingual person who is a native
speaker of the language you a working in. Work closely with the translator, so