THE EFFECT OF RESPONSE CATEGORIES ON QUESTIONNAIRE ANSWERS - CONTEXT AND MODE EFFECTS

This article reports the effect that the ranges presented in answer ca tegories for sun?ey questions can have on respondent answers. Response categories were manipulated in a split-ballot survey conducted in bot h telephone and mail modes. These categories, presented in the separat e ballots, overlapped in one category; the other categories were uniqu e to each bailor. The experiment was conducted on four questions: two frequent and mundane and two ran and salient. It was found that the re sponse categories significantly affected the response for frequent and mundane questions. One question demonstrated a significant difference in response between the mail and telephone modes. For this question, a response scale with a limited number of socially desirable alternati ves resulted in a social desirability effect in the telephone mode. Al ternatively the telephone mode demonstrated an extremeness effect when the response scale comprised a greater number of socially desirable a lternatives.