Response Patterns in a Long Question Grid in a Mail Survey Questionnaire
Abstract:
In mail surveys, researchers often face the challenge of too little space in the questionnaire for the number of questions they wish to administer. Oftentimes certain structuring methods are used in order to maximize the data gathering efficiency of a given set of questions. One such method involves using a grid format in which two or more questions with the same response options are grouped together in a ‘grid’ of rows and columns. In this way, the response options are not repeated for every question in the grid, which minimizes not only the use of space in the questionnaire, but also respondent’s burden of comprehending new scale for each question in the grid. Nevertheless, multiple items in a list can result in respondent’s fatigue which may lead to less careful responses towards the end of the question grid. This article investigates whether respondents tend to provide more extreme and straight (non-differentiation) responses towards the end of the question grid and whether the patterns of respondents are different among respondents with different interest in the topic of the survey. The data for this study comes from 2007 mail profile survey conducted by The Gallup Panel (N=20,691). Two versions of the questionnaire were used with the ordering of the response lists reversed for the grid question sets in one of the versions. Preliminary results indicate that the amount of extreme and non-differentiating responses increases towards the end of the question set, regardless of the content of the items. We discuss the findings from the study, some possible explanations for these effects and conclude with recommendations for future research.
Recommended Citation:
Kaminska, O., & Rao, K. (2008). Response Patterns in a Long Question Grid in a Mail Survey Questionnaire. Paper presented at the American Association of Public Opinion Research, New Orleans.
Attached Documents:
- AAPOR 2008 Program (see page #45 for the mention)
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