Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

338 Chapter 12
of the variation in people’s responses: adjectives of evaluation (good-bad,
difficult-easy), adjectives of potency (strong-weak, dominant-submissive,
etc.), and adjectives of activity (fast-slow, active-inactive, sedentary-mobile,
etc.).
As the target changes, of course, you have to make sure that the adjective
pairs make sense. The adjective pair ethical-corrupt works for some targets,
but you probably wouldn’t use it for having a cold.
Vincke et al. (2001) used the semantic differential scale to explore the
meaning of 25 sex acts among gay men in Flanders, Belgium. Their informants
scaled each act (anal insertive sex, anal receptive sex, insertive fellatio,
receptive fellatio, interfemoral sex, and so on) on six paired dimensions:
unsatisfying/satisfying, stimulating/dull, interesting/boring, emotional/
unemotional, healthy/unhealthy, and safety/danger. Vincke et al. then compared
results on the semantic differential for men who practiced safe sex (with
one partner or with a condom) and men who practiced unsafe sex (multiple
partners and without a condom) to see which sex acts were more gratifying
for high-risk-taking and low-risk-taking men.
How Many Scale Choices?
We know from everyday experience that how we phrase a question in part
determines the answer. We say things in ordinary conversation and, after listening
to the response, we backtrack, fill in, and cover: ‘‘No, that’s not what I
meant. What I meant was. . . .’’ It won’t come as a surprise, then, that our
informants respond to the way we phrase our questions. They know that an
interview is not an ordinary conversation, but it’s a conversation nonetheless.
They take cues from our questions, figure out what we want to know, and
respond the best they can.
Tourangeau and Smith (1996) asked men and women the following question:
‘‘During the last 12 months, that is, since August/September 1993, how
many men [women], if any, have you had intercourse with?’’ Some people
were asked simply to tell the interviewer a number. Others were asked to
choose one of the following: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more. And still others were
asked to choose one of the following: 1–4, 5–9, 10–49, 50–99, 100 or more.
It won’t surprise you to learn that people report more sex partners when given
high-end choices than when given low-end choices or an open-ended question
(ibid.:292). Norbert Schwarz and his colleagues (1985) found the same thing
when they asked people in Germany how many hours of television they
watched. If you give people choices that start high, you get reports of more
behavior.