Todd Hollander Market Research

Closed-ended questions should be one-dimensional. That is, they should ask about one and only one topic at a time. Questions that use more that one dimension are called “double-barreled”

Double-barreled questions often leave the respondent with no way to respond accurately. Take this question for example:

Do you think your manager is friendly and honest?
O Yes
O No

Although only two response options are offered (”Yes” or “No”), there are actually four possible responses to this question:

1. I think my manager is both friendly and honest
2. I think my manager is neither friendly nor honest
3. I think my manager is friendly but not honest
4. I think my manager is honest but not friendly

Because of the double-barreled nature of the question, the respondent can be put in a situation where she has to select one of the response options provided, even though neither may accurately represent her opinion.

In this example, the double-barreled question could have been avoided by using two questions instead of only one:

1. “Do you think your manager is friendly?”
   O Yes
   O No
2. “Do you think your manager is honest?”
   O Yes
   O No

The bottom line: To avoid the common mistake of asking double-barreled questions, make sure that each question in your survey asks about one and only one topic at a time.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Questionnaire Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.