Although list-style open-ended questions generally help us gain deeper insights into respondents' thoughts, opinions, and behaviors, the quality of responses is often compromised. We tested a dynamic and a follow-up design to motivate respondents to give higher quality responses than with a static design, but without overburdening them. Our…

Considerable research has examined the effect of response option order in ordinal bipolar questions such as satisfaction questions. However, no research we know of has examined the effect of the order of presentation of concepts in the question stem or whether stem order moderates response option order. In this article, we experimentally test the…

Factorial surveys are widely used in the social sciences to measure respondents' attitudes, beliefs, or behavioral intentions. In such surveys, respondents evaluate short descriptions of hypothetical situations, persons, or objects that vary across several dimensions. An important prerequisite of the method's validity is that respondents are able…

Web, or online, probing has the potential to supplement existing questionnaire design processes by providing structured cognitive data on a wider sample than typical qualitative-only question evaluation methods can achieve. One of the practical impediments to the further integration of web probing is the concern of survey managers about how the…

Many social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity) are measured using mark-all-that-apply (MATA) questions because they allow survey respondents to account for the multiple, nonexclusive ways in which they identify themselves. We test the use of MATA measures of sexual orientation and gender identity and compare them with forced choice (FC), an…

Previous research has shown that check-all-that-apply (CATA) and forced-choice (FC) question formats do not produce comparable results. The cognitive processes underlying respondents' answers to both types of formats still require clarification. This study contributes to filling this gap by using eye-tracking data. Both formats are compared by…

Prior studies suggest memories are potentially error prone. Proactive dependent interviewing (PDI) is a possible method to reduce errors in reports of change in longitudinal studies, reminding respondents of previous answers while asking if there has been any change since the last survey. However, little research has been conducted on the impact…

Measuring attitudes and opinions employing agree/disagree (A/D) questions is a common method in social research because it appears to be possible to measure different constructs with identical response scales. However, theoretical considerations suggest that A/D questions require a considerable cognitive processing. Item-specific (IS) questions,…

Vignette design has been largely neglected in anchoring vignette studies. This study aimed to contribute to the science of vignette design by developing and evaluating vignettes for measuring vision in rural China. Cognitive interviews were conducted among 36 participants in a Chinese middle school. The respondents either directly evaluated vision…