Exam 12: Designing the Questionnaire

An interview should start with an easy, nonthreatening question and be followed by sensitive questions to catch respondents by surprise.

To avoid incompleteness in a questionnaire, the researcher should do all of the following except

Preceding questions establish a frame of reference which influences a respondent's answers to questions that follow.

The purpose of a pretest is to ensure that the questionnaire meets the researcher's expectations in terms of the information that will be obtained.

If a questionnaire has been written by a researcher who is experienced in the subject area, a pretest can be skipped.

Which one of the following is a factor that affects the design of the questionnaire? a) respondent demographics b) method of administering the questionnaire c) the target population d) all of the above

A researcher who is unfamiliar with the respondents' vocabulary should use technical terms in survey questions since those terms are likely to have a common meaning.

Closed-response questions have an advantage over open-ended questions in that there is less potential error due to differences in the way questions are asked and answers are reported.

Because the disadvantages of open-ended questions usually outweigh the advantages, open-ended questions should only be used sparingly.

Open-ended questions are harder to develop and require more exploratory work than closed-response questions.

"Are you satisfied with the cost and quality of this shirt?" is an example of a __________ question.

Open-ended questions are generally easier for a respondent to answer than closed-ended questions, which require more thought.

The purpose of a pretest is to

If there is a likelihood of ignorance in the respondents, a "don't know" category is appropriate.

Direct questions are preferred in cases where respondents may tend to provide responses perceived as socially desirable or those they feel are desired by the interviewer

Hypotheses play an important role in translating the research objective into information requirements.

Responses to an open-ended question will not be influenced by pre- specified categories or by an interviewer's expectations of a respondent.

In international research, it is always clear that comparable or equivalent attitudinal or personality constructs are relevant in all countries and cultures

An example of an ordering problem is the tendency of some respondents to choose the center position in a list of categories.

Respondents in a pretest need not be representative of the sample population.