Chapter 6: The Survey Interview
Essay
1. List three essential criteria for selecting survey interviewers.
2. If you were the director of a student survey on the evaluation of instructors, what
instructions would you give to the interviewers?
3. Create a sample Likert scale question for a survey on lowering the legal age for drinking
alcoholic beverages.
4. Create a shuffle question strategy for an interview on voter intentions during a political
campaign.
5. What are the basic principles of stratified random sampling?
6. If you were conducting a survey on the parking problems on your campus and you
wanted all culturally diverse groups to be represented fairly, which sampling method
would you use?
7. When would you conduct a longitudinal survey?
8. When would you want to employ a filter question strategy?
9. How do interviewers avoid order bias in a survey?
10. Compare and contrast a nominal scale question with an ordinal scale question.
11. Why is margin of error an important consideration for survey takers and interpreters?
12. Why is a self-selection method of sampling unacceptable for most market and public
opinion polls?
13. Why is the telephone survey growing in popularity when research indicates it has many
serious problems?
14. What advice would you give to people who respond to survey interviewers?
15. What are some factors to consider when deciding whether to use a survey?
16. Explain the difference between a cross-sectional survey and a longitudinal survey.
17. When pretesting a survey, give some guidelines your textbook suggests when examining
the results.
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18. Discuss what Charles Redding recommended for handling the massive amounts of
information generated in surveys.
Multiple Choice
19. Three popular question strategies are:
a. interval, nominal, and ordinal.
b. filter, repeat, and shuffle.
c. bipolar, open to closed, and mirror.
d. dynamic, static, and meaningful.
20. Three question scale techniques are:
a. bipolar, contingency, and serial.
b. chain, leaning, and contingency.
c. interval, nominal, and ordinal.
d. filter, repeat, and leaning.
21. Margin of error refers to:
a. the level of confidence in results.
b. the acceptable percentage of interviewees who provide incorrect answers.
c. errors resulting from poor question phrasing.
d. the probability that each person from a defined population might be selected in
your sample.
22. Another name for skip interval sampling is _____.
a. random digit sampling
b. random numbers
c. block sampling
d. sample point
23. The term “sample point” refers to:
a. a geographical area that contains specific types of persons.
b. the point at which a survey reaches its prescribed margin of error.
c. the numerical point at which interviewers have obtained the necessary sample.
d. the target population of a survey.
24. Among the various question strategies used by interviewers, the _____ enables an
interviewer to determine if an interviewee is consistent in responses on a topic,
particularly a controversial one.
a. filter strategy
b. contingency strategy
c. repeat strategy
d. shuffle strategy
25. Which of the following question scales asks respondents to rate or rank options?
a. nominal scale
b. ordinal scale
c. numerical scale
d. Bogardus Social Distance Scale
26. Which of the following is a salient feature of the repeat strategy?
a. It enables an interviewer to determine the extent and accuracy of an interviewee’s
knowledge.
b. It enables an interviewer to vary the order of answer options from one interview
to the next to prevent order bias.
c. It requires an interviewer to make repetitions distinct without affecting the intent
of the initial question.
d. It allows an interviewer to use follow-up questions that reveal misinformation or
confusion.
27. Which of the following question strategies is designed to reduce undecided answers?
a. shuffle strategy
b. leaning strategy
c. leading strategy
d. filter strategy
28. The _____ enables a survey interviewer to include preplanned probing questions within a
survey in a highly scheduled and standardized format.
a. contingency strategy
b. repeat strategy
c. leaning strategy
d. shuffle strategy
29. If you select every tenth name from a telephone directory for a survey, you are using a
_____.
a. stratified random sampling
b. sampling point
c. table of random numbers
d. skip interval
30. Which of the following should one explore when conducting research on a topic?
a. the past
b. the present
c. the attempted solutions
d. All of the answers are correct.
31. Which of the following statements is true about an evaluative interval scale?
a. It usually moves progressively from remote to close relationships and distances to
detect changes as proximity narrows.
b. It asks respondents to rank the options in their implied relationship to one another.
c. It asks respondents to make judgments about persons, places, things, or ideas.
d. It provides mutually exclusive variables and asks respondents to name the most
appropriate variable.
32. _____ asks respondents to select a number that most accurately reflects how often they
do something or use something.
a. The nominal scale
b. The frequency interval scale
c. The ordinal scale
d. The Bogardus Social Distance Scale
33. _____ provides mutually exclusive variables and asks respondents to name the most
appropriate variable.
a. The ordinal scale
b. The nominal scale
c. The Bogardus Social Distance Scale
d. The numerical interval scale
34. Which strategy helps prevent negative or superficial evaluations due to boredom or
fatigue?
a. the shuffle strategy
b. the chain strategy
c. the filter strategy
d. the repeat strategy
35. Evaluate the following statement: “I like Aroma coffee best.”
1 Strongly agree
2 Agree
3 Neither agree nor disagree
4 Disagree
5 Strongly disagree
What is the above question scale known as?
a. the interval scale
b. the nominal scale
c. the ordinal scale
d. All of the answers are correct.
36. Which of the following types of scales would you be using if you asked someone on a
survey to rank order a list?
a. the interval scale
b. the ordinal scale
c. the nominal scale
d. the cardinal scale
37. In the context of question sequences, a(n) _____ is useful when no strategic lineup of
questions is needed.
a. hourglass sequence
b. tunnel sequence
c. funnel sequence
d. diamond sequence
38. Which of the following should a survey designer avoid when planning scale questions?
a. long scales
b. complicated rating procedures
c. lengthy explanations
d. All of the answers are correct.
39. If your margin of error is within 5 percentage points, you have set your level of
confidence at _____.
a. 98 percent
b. 95 percent
c. 85 percent
d. 100 percent
40. Which of the following is a salient feature of a face–to–face interview?
a. It allows the interviewer to establish credibility through physical appearance.
b. It prevents the interviewer from focusing on in-depth attitudes and information.
c. It is inexpensive and saves time.
d. It tends to obtain a poor response rate.
41. Which of the following is a feature of telephone survey interviews?
a. They are expensive and provide slower results in situations where speed is
critical.
b. They allow interview schedules to be long with more open-ended questions than
face-to–face interviews.
c. They allow interviewees to provide fewer socially acceptable answers compared
with face-to-face interviews.
d. They obtain good response rates because respondents readily divulge personal
information.
42. Which of the following statements is true about face-to-face interviews?
a. They prevent interviewers from asking many questions because respondents are
reluctant to take part in lengthy interviews.
b. They are easy to conduct in the allotted time and over a wide geographical area.
c. They prevent interviewers from identifying and interviewing candidates who are
part of a target population.
d. They allow an interviewer to control an interview by keeping the interviewee
focused until the completion of the interview.
43. Which of the following is NOT part of the final phase of survey interviewing?
a. design
b. coding
c. tabulation
d. analysis
44. Which of the following types of questions may require analysis and structuring before
developing a coding system?
a. standardized question
b. closed question
c. open-ended question
d. None of the answers is correct.
45. Which of the following is NOT a question to ask during analysis of data?
a. What conclusions can you draw?
b. Why did people respond in specific ways to specific questions?
c. What individuals should we interview?
d. What should be done with blanks on the survey forms?
46. In which of the following ways are an increasing number of interviews conducted?
a. e-mail
b. Web pages
c. computer direct
d. All of the answers are correct.
47. The chain strategy is also known as the contingency strategy.
a. True
b. False
48. A highly scheduled, standardized interview requires the interviewer to be an expert on the
topic of the survey.
a. True
b. False
49. To conduct a survey and prepare results overnight, a survey must be brief and highly
focused.
a. True
b. False
50. A Likert scale is also known as an evaluative interval scale.
a. True
b. False
51. It is acceptable to wear campaign buttons when conducting research surveys.
a. True
b. False
52. It is important to ask all questions exactly as worded.
a. True
b. False
53. It is appropriate to maintain a pleasant “poker face” when administering a survey.
a. True
b. False
54. It is acceptable to discuss the survey with the interviewee after closing an interview.
a. True
b. False
55. Content seems to be more important than speaking skills during the opening of a
telephone interview.
a. True
b. False
56. Internet surveys lose critical nonverbal communication element.
a. True
b. False
57. As an interviewer, long silences in telephone interviews should NOT be filled with “uh–
huhs.”
a. True
b. False
58. A cross-sectional survey determines trends or changes in feelings, attitudes, or thoughts
over time such as months or years.
a. True
b. False
59. Random sampling can be achieved by putting the names of all population members into a
container and drawing them out one by one until you have a large enough sample size.
a. True
b. False
60. Sample point and block sample are the same type of sampling technique.
a. True
b. False
61. Interviewers should dress differently than those they will be interviewing.
a. True
b. False
62. A longitudinal survey takes a slice of feelings, attitudes, and thoughts during a narrow
time span such as a day or so after an event, political debate, or disaster.
a. True
b. False
63. A leaning question is the same as a leading question.
a. True
b. False
64. Numerical interval scales ask respondents to select a range or level that accurately
reflects their age, income, or educational level.
a. True
b. False
65. A chain or contingency strategy allows interviewers to probe into answers while
maintaining control and replicating interviews from one respondent to the next.
a. True
b. False
66. Openings of surveys should be written out and recited verbatim.
a. True
b. False
67. Nominal scales must have mutually exclusive answer options.
a. True
b. False
68. In quantitative surveys, all primary questions and most probing questions are planned
ahead of time.
a. True
b. False
69. Face–to-face interviews enable interviewers to identify interviewees who are part of the
target population and to interview them in specific locations and at specific times.
a. True
b. False
70. The majority of refusals in telephone surveys occur prior to the first substantive question.
a. True
b. False
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71. If an interviewee is anxious, suspicious, or very reluctant to give his or her phone number
or e-mail address, the interviewer should consider backing off such requests if he or she
has the authority to do so.
a. True
b. False
72. Probing questions are less frequent and usually planned in survey interviews.
a. True
b. False
73. In sampling, each potential respondent from a defined population must have an equal
opportunity of being selected.
a. True
b. False
74. It is all right to rephrase a survey question if a respondent does NOT understand.
a. True
b. False
75. Some researchers have discovered that phrasing questions negatively can avoid
misleading and confusing respondents.
a. True
b. False
76. Critical nonverbal communication is enhanced in Internet interviews.
a. True
b. False