A questionnaire can be administered either as a printed document that respondents fill out or as a list of queries posed by an interviewer, who then compiles interviewees' answers either by writing on a printed form or by recording the replies on audiotape or videotape.

Types of Questionnaire Items

Questionnaires typically contain one or more item types: (a) dual-choice, (b) multiple-choice, (c) short-answer, or (d) narrative or essay.

Dual-choice items

Multiple choices

Seven uses have been suggested for spending the money collected in the Kiwanis lottery. Place a I beside the item you think is the best way to use the money, a 2 beside the way you consider second best, and a 3 beside the way you think is third best.

Figure 8-1 illustrates one popular form of a researcher-constructed rating scale, a semantic-differential type featuring diametrically contrasting adjectives at the opposite ends of each scale line. This example displays the first four lines of an assessment instrument designed to elicit observers' judgments of trial lawyers' questioning styles as shown in scenes recorded on videotape. The "favorable" end of scales is randomly changed from left to right on successive lines so as to combat any tendency of participants to carelessly mark the same end of all scales on the basis of the response-set they bring to the task, such as a tendency to generally approve or disapprove of the lawyer in the scene. Thus, raters must study every scale line individually in order to produce a coherent overall judgment of the lawyers' styles.

A researcher can later convert the raters' judgments into numerical form for purposes of analysis by weighting the seven spaces form 1 (least favorable rating) to 7 (most favorable rating).

Figure 8-1 Trial Lawyers' Questioning Styles Instructions: As you watch the videotape, use a copy of this rating sheet to record your impression of the questioning style of each of the four lawyers portrayed in the court scenes. Place an X in the space on each line that you believe best represents the lawyer's style. First Lawyer Blunt Subtle Fair Unfair Threatening Kindly Serious Humorous

Short-answer items

This approach requires respondents to offer a word or phrase in reply to a question. One advantage of such items is that they do not restrict people's answers to a set of options presented by the researcher but, rather, they allow people to reply in any way they wish. A disadvantage is that the range of answers may be so diverse that the responses are difficult to classify into categories that are easy to compile and interpret. Yet such diversity may be necessary if people's answers are to accurately represent their opinions and knowledge.Here are two short-answer questions from a study of prison inmates' interests.

Narrative items

In contrast to multiple-choice and short-answer questions, narrative items enable respondents to identify in detail a variety of factors that have influenced their experiences and opinions. As a result, narrative responses can reveal the unique patterning of different people's knowledge and attitudes. However, the individualistic nature of narrative answers increases the difficulty of classifying responses into categories that are readily compared.

Questionnaire Resources