Carbon, Maria Jorgeth O.

February 22, 2020

Research Instrumentation

Report Title: Asking Non-threatening Questions about Behavior

Synthesis:

May it be qualitative or quantitative research, researchers must be sensitive in developing

questions especially for behavioral questions. Failure to double check the questions, or without taking

validity check, questions may turn to be threatening and if questions are threatening, it would hard for

the researcher to get an exact valid and reliable responses. However, there are techniques to make

behavioral questions easier and surely not threatening.

What are these questions that may threaten the informants or respondents? These may be like:

do you smoke? How much pay are you getting? Have you tried abortion? Definitely, these are Big No

questions. Aside from these very obvious threatening questions about behavior, there are signals to

really check if questions are threatening. It is often to conclude that questions are threatening if there is

no standard method, it could be “socially desirable” behaviors may be over reported and “socially

undesirable” behaviors may be under reported.

Based on the reporter’s discussion, she made mentioned of eight ways to make behavioral

questions easier. These are through the use of aided recall wherein, it will provide memory cues, the use

of cards and thinking of household inventory. Second, make sure the questions are specific by making

the task of the respondents or informants easier. Third, be mindful of an appropriate time period to ask

about. Don’t miss to use bounded recall, that’s the fourth, where it involves repeated interviews with

the same respondents. Also, use secondary records to reduce the tendency of telescoping. For the sixth

way, is the importance of the use of diaries and panel research. But no one can get wrong for the
seventh way, of course, it is the use of right words, words that everyone in the sample understands and

that have only and the same meaning you intend for them to view or understand. And of course, the

eightth way is to determine the appropriate length of questions but the key there, is to make questions

as short as possible.

One may lost track of memory, that means, there would be tendency to forget the eight ways in

making behavioral questions easier, but a certain way may be forever be the remembered and that is to

ask questions with due diligence and care.