Chapter 6

Question 1

Closed-ended Questions

Answer 1

present 2 or more alternatives, and the respondents select the choice closest to their own position.

Question 2

Context effects

Answer 2

effects of preceding questions on the response to later questions, pose the same sorts of issues as effects of question wording, although they seem to be less powerful

Question 3

Double-Barreled Questions

Answer 3

inappropriately combine two separate ideas and require a single response.

Question 4

Filter question

Answer 4

intended solely to screen out respondents who do not have any knowledge or opinion on the issue

Question 5

Floaters

Answer 5

people who do not know the answer to a filter question, but give a substantive opinion to an unfiltered question

Question 6

Forced-choice format

Answer 6

an alternative strategy is to avoid questions that present a statement with which respondents agree or disagree. Forced responses.

Question 7

Funnel Principle

Answer 7

General questions should come first, followed by increasingly specific and detailed questions, with the sequence “funneling down” to the more detailed questions at the end.

Question 8

Items

Answer 8

questions or statements to which participants provide a response.

Question 9

Memory Telescoping

Answer 9

tendency to recall events are more recent than their actual dates.

Question 10

Open-Ended Questions

Answer 10

allow the respondents to answer in a relatively unconstrained way, either writing or typing a response or telling it to the interviewer, who is instructed to record the response verbatim. Later, the researcher can enlist judges to code the responses in terms of a system of categories.

Question 11

Randomized response technique

Answer 11

used to obtain information on sensitive topics when direct questioning is not a viable option. There are a number of variations of the technique, but they have similar characteristics. Key characteristic is that the interviewer does not know whether the answer pertains to the sensitive or innocuous question, so the respondents’ privacy is protected in some measure. However, since the properties of the randomizing device are known, the results can be statistically analyzed to reveal meaningful variations in response.

Question 12

Responses

Answer 12

typically are numeric, however, they can involve simple binary choices (true or false) or verbal reports (describe in your own words how you felt…).

Question 13

Scales

Answer 13

groups of items to operationally define constructs

Question 14

Sociometric Questionnaire

Answer 14

asks each member of a group to indicate which other members he or she would like to have a s a partner in some interaction and which group members he or she would not like to have as a partner.

Question 15

Split-Ballot Experiment

Answer 15

Two (or more) versions of a questionnaire, with different wordings or sequences, are used for different, randomly chosen subsets of respondents. Because the random choice means that the respondents receiving the different forms are equivalent, any differences in response can be attributed to the wording or sequence variation.