Research Tips

Check for Multiple Interpretations

It’s important to check to see if there is more than one way to interpret a question or a response, and if there is then to clarify the question or the response categories to remove the ambiguity. For example, we recently encountered a survey that included the following question: “Prices are consistent with similar homes on the market.” Respondents were asked to answer using a scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Unfortunately, the company sponsoring the survey won’t know whether people who disagree with this statement believe that the company’s houses are more or less expensive than similar homes on the market. The question should have been split into two (one stating that the houses are more expensive and one stating that they are less) or reworded to something like, “Compared to similar homes on the market, prices of … homes are …”, with a response scale ranging from “much less expensive” to “much more expensive” and the mid-point being “about the same”.