Course: CMM 128 Interviewing Practices

Lecture Notes

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Survey Interviews (Continued)

4. Design your questions and question strategies. Surveys primarily use scale questions. Scales can be either nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio.

 | Definition | Example
Nominal scales | These scales deal with different categories | What color is your hair? (circle one) Blonde, Brown, Black, Red, Other Did you graduate from high school? Yes No
Ordinal scales | These scales ask the interviewee to rank items | What hair color is your favorite? What was your class rank in high school (e.g., were you the top ranked student in your class? Second ranked? Etc.)
Interval scales | These scales have equal distance between the units used in the scale but they do not have a true zero (i.e., zero on the scale does not mean the concept being measured does not exist) | On a scale from zero to ten, how healthy are you? (note that someone who chooses zero on this scale still has enough health to circle a number) What was your grade point average in high school? (note that you still have intelligence even if you have a GPA of 0.0) What is the temperature outside in centigrade? (note that it can still get colder even if the temperature is zero degrees centigrade)
Ratio scales
These scales have equal distance between the units used in the scale and they have a true zero. These scales primarily occur in the sciences.
How much do you weigh in pounds?

How much money do you have in the bank?

How tall are you in centimeters?

How cold is it outside in Kelvin degrees? (note that zero degrees Kelvin is absolute zero, i.e., it cannot get any colder)

Use these question strategies if appropriate:

- Shuffle strategy - This strategy involves changing the order of the answers in a question each time the question is asked of a different person. For example, an interviewer might ask, "Which place would you prefer to visit: Italy, France, Spain, England, Portugal, or Germany?" Since people will tend to remember the first and last answer, reordering the options each time balances out this bias. For example, the next time, the interview might ask, "Which place would you prefer to visit: England, Portugal, Germany, France, or Spain."
- Repeat strategy - In this strategy, the same or similar question is asked the interviewee. For example, the interviewer might ask how old the interviewee is and later on, ask on what date the interview was born. If these do not match up, something is wrong with the interview. Another way to do this is to ask a question like, "I like this class: Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree." Later on, ask the opposite of this question, e.g., "I hate this class: Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree." This also makes it so the interviewee has to read each question rather than assuming they are all worded the same way.
- Filter strategy - Interviewees sometimes answer questions that they don't know anything about. To prevent this, the filter strategy first finds out what people know before asking for their opinion on the subject. If the interviewee does not know anything about the subject, the interviewer may educate them on the subject or may skip to another question. The following would be part of a schedule that used a filter strategy: Question 1: What do you know about proposition 5 that will be on the ballot during the next election? (If they know it deals with a proposed increase in property taxes to fund a football stadium, go to question 2. If they don't know what it is, go to question 3). Question 2: Are you for or against proposition 5? Question 3: Are you planning to vote in the next election?
- Leaning strategy - This strategy is used to decrease the number of undecided voters. If an interviewer asked an interviewee who he or she was going to vote for in the next election and the interviewee said, "I don't know," the interviewer would use the leaning strategy by asking, "If you had to vote today, who are you leaning toward."
- Contingency strategy - The contingency strategy is used when the next question asked depends on the answer to the previous one. The filter strategy is often designed as a contingency question too although it could be possible that everyone was asked the same list of questions. The leaning strategy is another example of a contingency question. Generally, the contingency strategy is used so questions not relevant to the interviewee are skipped. For example: Question 1: Do you smoke cigarettes? (If no, go to question 4, otherwise continue.) Question 2: What brand of cigarettes do you smoke? Question 3: How many cigarettes do you smoke per day? Question 4: Do you drink alcohol? (If no, go to question 7.)....

5. Pilot test your survey. Revise the survey and re-test it in a pilot survey until the bugs are worked out.

6. Conduct a full-scale survey.

7. Analyze the results.