1. Social Research Methods
Alan Bryman
Social Research Methods
Chapter 11: Asking questions
Slides authored by Tom Owens

2. Open questions Advantages Disadvantages
Respondents answer in their own terms
Allow for new, unexpected responses
Exploratory - generate fixed answer questions
Disadvantages
Time-consuming for interviewer and respondent
Difficult to code
More effort required from respondent
Interviewer variation in recording answers
Pages 246, 247 2

3. Closed questions Advantages Disadvantages
Quicker and easier to complete (better response rate and less missing data)
Easy to process data (pre-coded)
Easy to compare answers (intercoder reliability)
Disadvantages
Restrictive range of answers: no spontaneity
Difficult to make fixed choice answers exhaustive
Respondents may interpret questions differently
Pages 249, 252 3

4. Types of questions Personal factual questions
Factual questions about others
Informant factual questions
Attitudes
Beliefs
Normative standards and values
Knowledge of a subject
Pages 253 4

5. Designing questions: general rules
Remember your research questions
Decide exactly what you want to find out
Imagine yourself as a respondent
How would you answer the questions?
Identify any vague or misleading questions
Pages 254 5

6. Things to avoid….. Ambiguous terms: ‘often’, ‘regularly’, ‘frequently’
Long questions
Double-barrelled questions: may be different answers to each part
Very general questions: because they lack a frame of reference
Leading questions: hinting at a preferred response
Asking two questions in one
Negative terms: ‘not’, ‘never’ - especially double negatives
Technical terms, (jargon and acronyms)
Pages 6

7. Things to make sure of…..
Do the respondents have the requisite knowledge?
If you just want a yes/no answer, have you given more possibilities?
Have you an equal number of positive and negative responses to a question to avoid bias?
Are you relying too much on the respondent’s memory?
Have you thought through whether you should include “don’t know” options?
Pages 258, 259 7

8. Common mistakes when designing questions
Excessive use of open questions
Excessive use of yes/no questions
No instructions about how to indicate answers (tick box, circle, delete?)
Overlapping categories
More than one answer may be applicable
Answers do not correspond to the question
Tips and skills
Pages 259, 260 8

9. Vignette questions Present respondents with a scenario
Ask them how they would respond or what they think the characters should do
Anchors opinions and choices in a concrete, specific context (may be easier to answer)
Useful for sensitive topics
Less threatening: imaginary characters suggest social distance from respondent
Pages 9

10. Piloting and pre-testing questions
Check that the research instrument works
Gain practice in using the interview schedule
Does each question flow smoothly on to the next?
Identify vague or confusing questions
Remove any questions that receive uniform responses
Open questions can generate fixed choice answers for closed questions in the main research
Be careful that people who help with your pilot study are not included in the final sample
Pages 263, 264 10

11. Using existing questions
Common practice in survey research
Questions have already been piloted
Known properties of reliability and validity
Helps you to draw comparisons with other studies
‘Question banks’
Repositories of questions used in previous surveys
Consult the UK Data Archive
Pages 264 11