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Types of Items

20 January, 2016 - 17:01

Questionnaire items can be either open-ended or closed-ended. Open-endeitems simply ask a question and allow participants to answer in whatever way they choose. The following are examples of open-ended questionnaire items.

  • “What is the most important thing to teach children to prepare them for life?”
  • “Please describe a time when you were discriminated against because of your age.”
  • “Is there anything else you would like to tell us about?”

Open-ended items are useful when researchers do not know how participants might respond or want to avoid influencing their responses. They tend to be used when researchers have more vaguely defined research questions—often in the early stages of a research project. Open-ended items are relatively easy to write because there are no response options to worry about. However, they take more time and effort on the part of participants, and they are more difficult for the researcher to analyze because the answers must be transcribed, coded, and submitted to some form of content analysis.

Closed-endeitemask a question and provide a set of response options for participants to choose from. The alcohol item just mentioned is an example, as are the following:

How old are you?

  •    Under 18
  •    18 to 34
  •    35 to 49
  •    50 to 70
  •    Over 70

On a scale of 0 (no pain at all) to 10 (worst pain ever experienced), how much pain are you in right now? 

Have you ever in your adult life been depressed for a period of 2 weeks or more?

Closed-ended items are used when researchers have a good idea of the different responses that participants might make. They are also used when researchers are interested in a well-defined variable or construct such as participants’ level of agreement with some statement, perceptions of risk, or frequency of a particular behavior. Closed-ended items are more difficult to write because they must include an appropriate set of response options. However, they are relatively quick and easy for participants to complete. They are also much easier for researchers to analyze because the responses can be easily converted to numbers and entered into a spreadsheet. For these reasons, closed-ended items are much more common.

All closed-ended items include a set of response options from which a participant must choose. For categorical variables like sex, race, or political party preference, the categories are usually listed and participants choose the one (or ones) that they belong to. For quantitative variables, a rating scale is typically provided. A ratinscale is an ordered set of responses that participants must choose from. Figure 9.2 Example Rating Scales for Closed-Ended Questionna... shows several examples. The number of response options on a typical rating scale ranges from three to 11—although five and seven are probably most common. They can consist entirely of verbal labels or they can consist of a set of numbers with verbal labels as “anchors.” In some cases, the verbal labels or numbers can be supplemented with (or even replaced by) meaningful graphics. The last rating scale shown in Figure 9.2 Example Rating Scales for Closed-Ended Questionna... is a visual-analog scale, on which participants make a mark somewhere along the horizontal line to indicate the magnitude of their response.

Figure 9.2 Example Rating Scales for Closed-Ended Questionnaire Items
 

What Is a Likert Scale?

In reading about psychological research, you are likely to encounter the term Likertscale. Although this term is sometimes used to refer to almost any rating scale (e.g., a 0-to-10 life satisfaction scale), it has a much more precise meaning.

In the 1930s, researcher Rensis Likert (pronounced LICK-ert) created a new approach for measuring people’s attitudes (Likert, 1932). 1 It involves presenting people with several statements—including both favorable and unfavorable statements—about some person, group, or idea. Respondents then express their agreement or disagreement with each statement on a 5-point scale: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Numbers are assigned to each response (with reverse coding as necessary) and then summed across all items to produce a score representing the attitude toward the person, group, or idea. The entire set of items came to be called a Likert scale.

Thus unless you are measuring people’s attitude toward something by assessing their level of agreement with several statements about it, it is best to avoid calling it a Likert scale. You are probably just using a “rating scale.”