Question and Answer Choice Order This lecture is a part of a series of lectures on survey designing. We tend to talk about

Question and Answer Choice Order
    Good morning everyone. Today’s lecture is a very important part of a series of lectures on survey designing, so I’d like to spend some time discussing with you the following topic: How to determine the question and answer choice order.
    There are two broad issues to keep in mind when considering question and answer choice order.(1)One is how the question and answer choice order can encourage people to complete your survey.(2)The other issue is how the order of questions or the order of answer choices could affect the results of your survey.
    Ideally, the early questions in a survey should be easy and pleasant to answer. These kinds of questions encourage people to continue the survey.(3)In telephone or personal interviews they help build rapport with the interviewer. Grouping together questions on the same topic also makes the questionnaire easier to answer.
     (4)Whenever possible leave difficult or sensitive questions until near the end of your survey. Any rapport that has been built up will make it more likely for people to answer these questions. If people quit at that point anyway, at least they will have answered most of your questions.
    Answer choice order can make individual questions easier or more difficult to answer.(5)Whenever there is a logical or natural order to answer choices, use it. Always present agree-disagree choices in that order. Presenting them in disagree-agree order will seem odd.(6)For the same reason, positive to negative and excellent to poor scales should be presented in those orders.(7)When using numeric rating scales higher numbers should mean a more positive or more agreeing answer.
    Question order can affect the results in two ways.(8)One is that mentioning something, such as an idea, an issue, a brand, in one question can make people think of it while they answer a later question, when they might not have thought of it if it had not been previously mentioned. In some cases you may be able to reduce this problem by randomizing the order of related questions.(9)Separating related questions with unrelated ones can also reduce this problem, though neither technique will eliminate it.     (10)The other way question order can affect results is habituation. This problem applies to a series of questions that all have the same answer choices. It means that some people will usually start giving the same answer, without really considering it, after being asked a series of similar questions. People tend to think more when asked the earlier questions in the series and so give more accurate answers to them.
    If you are using telephone, computer direct or Internet interviewing, good software can help with this problem. Software should allow you to present a series of questions in a random order in each interview. This technique will not eliminate habituation, but will ensure that it applies equally to all questions in a series, not just to particular questions near the end of a series.
     (11)Another way to reduce this problem is to ask only a short series of similar questions at a particular point in the questionnaire. Then ask one or more different kinds of questions, and then another short series if needed.
     (12-1)A third way to reduce habituation is to change the " positive" answer. This applies mainly to level -of-agreement questions.(12-2)You can word some statements so that a high level of agreement means satisfaction, for example, "My supervisor gives me positive feedback", and others so that a high level of agreement means dissatisfaction, for example, "My supervisor usually ignores my suggestions". This technique forces the respondent to think more about each question. One negative aspect of this technique is that you may have to modify some of the data after the results are entered, because having the higher levels of agreement always means a positive(or negative)answer makes the analysis much easier. However, the few minutes’ extra work may be a worthwhile price to pay to get more accurate data.
    The order in which the answer choices are presented can also affect the answers given. People tend to pick the choices nearest the start of a list when they read the list themselves on paper or a computer screen. People tend to pick the most recent answer when they hear a list of choices read to them.
     (13)As mentioned previously, sometimes answer choices have a natural order, for example, Yes, followed by No: or Excellent-Good-Fair-Poor. If so, you should use that order. At other times, questions have answers that are obvious to the person that is answering them, for example, " Which brands of car do you own?". In these cases, the order in which the answer choices are presented is not likely to affect the answers given. However,(14)there are kinds of questions, particularly questions about preference or recall or questions with relatively long answer choices that express an idea or opinion, in which the answer choice order is more likely to affect which choice is picked. If you are using telephone, computer direct, or Web page interviewing, have your software present these kinds of answer choices in a random order.
    In addition,(15)one thing you should keep in mind, that is, keep the questionnaire as short as possible. We mentioned this principle before, but it is so important and it is worth repeating. More people will complete a shorter questionnaire, regardless of the interviewing method. If a question is not necessary, do not include it.
    All right. Today we talked about the ways to determine the question and answer choice order. I hope that you will find my lecture useful and you can learn something from it. Thank you!