Test bank

Chapter 14: Questionnaire design

1. Which of the following is an advantage of using closed-ended format questions?

a. Simpler word choice

b. Minimized coding error

c. Ability to elicit unexpected responses

d. Ecologically valid response options

2. A researcher administered a questionnaire asking several open-ended and ‘what-if’ questions about the trash disposal system in a small town in order to learn more about the town’s attitudes on waste management policy. Which aim was the researcher targeting most?

a. Hypothesis generation

b. Test development and validation

c. Reliability analysis

d. Hypothesis and model testing

3. The question: ‘What is your favorite musical? ______ (fill in response)’ has an open-ended format.

a. True

b. False

4. A researcher wants to determine the satisfaction level of a group of townspeople after the construction of a nearby power plant. He plans to create a satisfaction survey with only closed-ended questions. Which of the following should the researcher do first?

a. Talk to potential respondents to find out what they think the key questions are and what their responses would be

b. Run a series of taped focus groups

c. Read about the townspeople’s’ former reactions to energy management policy

d. All of these

5. Which of the following is NOT an example of a categorical response format question?

a. On which day of the week do you typically go to the movies?

b. Do you work part-time (30 hours a week or less) or full-time (more than 30 hours a week)?

c. On how many days in the last month have you felt depressed about something?

d. Which of the four Beatles do you think is the most talented?

6. A researcher wants to know which of the four Beatles a certain population finds most talented. Which of the following response formats would be best to use?

a. Ranking

b. Rating scale

c. Open-ended

d. None of these

7. A researcher uses the following question in a mental health questionnaire written for 5th graders: Does your level of psychobiologic arousal fluctuate throughout the day as a function of contextually variant threat perception? Which kind of wording problem are the respondents MOST likely to encounter?

a. Leading question

b. Technical terminology

c. Value judgement

d. Hidden assumption

8. A researcher uses the following question in an online questionnaire for adolescent girls and their attitudes toward their younger sisters (all participants had younger sisters): My sister would best be described as: An Overachiever; A ‘Neat Freak’; A ‘Couch Potato’; or ‘An Athlete.’ For which of the following reasons would the results of this survey be of doubtful validity?

a. Hypothetical questioning

b. Double-barreled questioning

c. Open-ended format

d. Vague/ill-defined response alternatives

9. Which of the following questions is least likely to be left blank on a questionnaire?

a. What is your race?

b. What is your gender?

c. In what age range do you fall?

d. What is your income level?

10. The principal of a middle school wanted to learn more about her students’ school attendance. She crafted a 15-minute survey with several different response formats asking about her students’ views on truancy and how much they liked attending school. In order to ensure her students would answer as accurately as possible, she included a note on the first page of the survey explaining that students’ attendance records would be accessed as part of her study. Which technique was the principal using?

a. Satisficing

b. Using filter questions

c. Bogus pipeline

d. Assessing acquiescence bias

11. While attempting to assess dating and relationship attitudes among adults in their 30s, a researcher includes the following question in a questionnaire: Do you think you will be involved in a serious relationship in the near future; Yes or No? What can the researcher do to make this a better question?

a. Be more specific about the timeframe and what constitutes a serious relationship

b. Ask as two separate questions

c. Include a broader age range of adults

d. None of these

12. Which of the following is recommended for efficient questionnaire design?

a. Making a set of questions that takes about 60 minutes to complete

b. Asking sensitive questions at the beginning of the questionnaire

c. Changing the font size to get the on as few pages as possible so the questionnaire looks short

d. None of these

13. A researcher must administer a questionnaire about pet care to a population of pet owners and non-pet owners. The questionnaire first asks, ‘Do you own a pet: Yes or No.’ He then includes directions in boldface type that say ‘If you answered NO to Question 1, please skip Question 2 and continue to Question 3.’ What kind of question is the researcher employing?

a. Open-ended response

b. Filter question

c. Rating scale

d. Leading question

14. When gauging customers’ degree of satisfaction with a new brand of microwaveable popcorn, which of the following question formats/techniques is best to use?

a. Yes/No format

b. Open-ended

c. Tick boxes on a single line

d. Bogus pipeline

15. What error would you associate with this question: How unfair do you think it is that the government added 100 titles to the Banned Book List in the last year?

a. Leading question

b. Value judgement

c. Using a vague quantifier

d. Double-barrelled question

16. What problem is associated with this question, included in a fashion survey for teenage boys: What colour socks do you normally wear with a black tuxedo?

a. It is an open-ended question

b. It is a leading question

c. It contains a hidden assumption

d. It contains a double negative

17. Which of the following is NOT a concern associated with using an existing questionnaire?

a. Inappropriate or irrelevant terminology

b. Flawed question order/design

c. Culturally specific phrasing

d. All of the above are dangers associated with using existing questionnaires

18. A researcher administers a brief satisfaction questionnaire to the crossing guards of a small town to assess their satisfaction with recently changes to the town’s School Zone speed limits. Which of the following aims does this questionnaire chiefly satisfy?

a. Hypothesis generation

b. Population parameter estimation

c. Test development and validation

d. Hypothesis and model testing

19. When creating a questionnaire about customer satisfaction with a large department store, a researcher asks, ‘How often do you make purchases from our store?’ with answer choices such as: ‘Very Often’, ‘Often’, ‘Sometimes’, ‘Seldom’, and ‘Never’. When analyzing the data from this questionnaire, the researcher may encounter difficulty when assessing the store’s popularity because:

a. the researcher used vague quantifiers in his question.

b. the question was categorical.

c. the question was double-barreled.

d. the question used technical terminology.

20. The morning after a highly popular, televised political debate airs on a major television network, an online survey asks: Did you like the political debate and the commercials shown afterwards? Yes or No. What is the main error associated with this type of question?

a. It is a leading question

b. It is double-barrelled

c. This question has ambiguous wording

d. This question features context effects