SOCY 210 Study Guide - Collectively Exhaustive Events, Vagueness, Artificiality

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 210
• Professor: Vincent F Sacco

Document Summary

Open ended: respondent answers with own opinion. Close ended: respondent chooses from list of answers. Unambiguous: close ended should be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. Keep order of questions that maintain interest. Should include clear instructions and introductory comments where appropriate: pretest questionnaires to protect against errors. Put interesting questions first and boring questions later: draws person"s attention. Respondent must be competent to answer: their answer must be reliable. Avoid: jargon, slang, abbreviations, vagueness, emotionally charged language. Do you approve of doctors killing patients: leading questions- not preferring one answer over another. How does it feel to be poor and black: don"t ask things beyond recalling, questions not relevant to respondent, negative items and double negatives, threatening questions. Contingency questions: certain questions apply to some respondents but not others, answering questions based on previous question. If yes, skip to question 10 eg. matrix questions: ask several questions that have same set of answer questions for each.