A series of questions that moves from a very general question to progressively more specific questions.
This type of question requires considerable effort from respondents and interviewers.
A question that applies to some respondents but not to others.
This type of question assumes that respondents project their feelings and opinions onto others.
A series of responses ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”
Tendency to give answers that project a favorable self-image.
This is an example: “Did you file federal and state income tax returns last year?”
The development of an accounting scheme for formulating questions to find out the basis of people’s decisions.
This type of question has a fixed set of response alternatives.
This is an example: “Are you concerned with the growing menace of military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons?”
A field pretesting technique that describes the frequency of problematic respondent and interview behaviors.
Laboratory pretesting techniques designed to reveal the thought processes involved in answering survey questions.