Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Structured Interviewing I: Questionnaires 283
This is better:
Strongly Approve
Approve
Neutral
Disapprove
Strongly Disapprove
It pays to spend time on the physical format of a questionnaire. The general
appearance, the number of pages, the type of introduction, and the amount of
white (or green) space—all can affect how people respond, or whether they
respond at all (Akkerboom and Schmeets 1998). Once you’ve gone to the
expense of printing up hundreds of survey instruments, you’re pretty much
stuck with what you’ve got.
Use lots of open space in building schedules for personal interviews, too.
Artificially short, crowded instruments only result in interviewers missing
items and possibly in annoying respondents (imagine yourself sitting for 15
minutes in an interview before the interviewer flips the first page of an interview
schedule).
5. Length: Keep mailed questionnaires down to 10 pages, with no more than 125
questions. Beyond that, response rates drop (Dillman 1978). Herzog and Bachman
(1981) recommend splitting questionnaires in half and alternating the order
of presentation of the halves to different respondents to test for response effects
of questionnaire length.
It is tempting to save printing and mailing costs and to try to get more questions
into a few pages by reducing the amount of white space in a self-administered
questionnaire. Don’t do it. Respondents are never fooled into thinking
that a thin-but-crowded questionnaire is anything other than what it seems to
be: a long questionnaire that has been forced into fewer pages and is going to
be hard to work through.
6. The cover letter: A one-page cover letter should explain, in the briefest possible
terms, the nature of the study, how the respondent was selected, who should fill
out the questionnaire (the respondent or the members of the household), who is
funding the survey, and why it is important for the respondent to send back the
questionnaire. (‘‘Your response to this questionnaire is very important. We need
your response because. . . .’’)
The one thing that increases response rate more than any other is university
sponsorship (Fox et al. 1988). University sponsorship, though, is not enough.
If you want a response rate that is not subject to bias, be sure to address the