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Asking Sensitive Questions: The Impact of Data Collection Mode, Question Format, and
Question Context
Author(s): Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
Source: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 275-304
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public
Opinion Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2749691
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ASKING SENSITIVE QUESTIONS
THE IMPACT OF DATA COLLECTION
MODE, QUESTION FORMAT,
AND QUESTION CONTEXT
ROGER TOURANGEAU
TOM W. SMITH
Over the past 2 decades, two trends have transformed survey data
collection in the United States. The first trend has been the introduc-
tion and widespread adoption of computerized tools for surveys; these
ROGER TOURANGEAU iS senior scientist and TOM W. SMITH is director of the General
Social Survey at NORC. The research reported here was supported by an NSF grant
(SES 9122488) to Tom Smith and Roger Tourangeau; additional funds were provided
by the NORC Director's Fund. The authors would like to thank Ron Dorsey and Geoff
Walker, who were responsible for the development of the data collection systems used
in the study; Hiroaki Minato, who assisted with the data analysis; Joan Law, who helped
manage the project; and the reviewers, who made many helpful suggestions on the
manuscritt.
Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 60:275-304 ? 1996 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research
All rights reserved. 0033-362X/96/6002-0003$02.50
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276 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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Asking Sensitive Questions 277
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280 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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284 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
consumption than closed items, at least among those who report drink-
ing at all. There are at least two reasons to suppose that open items
may increase accuracy. First, as Burton and Blair (1991) have argued,
closed items may suggest to the respondents that approximate answers
are acceptable and encourage responses based on estimation pro-
cesses; their results, however, offer limited support for the hypothesis
that closed items reduce accuracy. Second, when the item is closed,
respondents may infer that the middle response option represents the
typical value and use this option as an anchor for their own answers
(Schwarz and Hippler 1987). It is possible that the use of closed items
may increase the discrepancy between the number of sex partners
reported by men and women by suggesting that inexact answers are
legitimate; it is also possible, on the other hand, that the use of broad
categories (especially at the upper end) will make it easier for women
to report large numbers of partners. To test the effect of the answer
options presented in the closed questions, we used two versions of
each closed item-one with categories mainly at the low end of the
range and a second version with categories concentrated at the high
end of the range. In addition to these two closed forms, we also in-
cluded an open form of each of the sex partner questions.
This study also examined the effects of prior items on the reporting
of sex partners. Just before the sex partner questions, respondents
answered one of two sets of questions about their sexual attitudes.
One set of items was designed to encourage respondents to report
large numbers of sex partners; these questions consisted of statements
expressing "permissive" views about sexual activity. The other set
of questions was designed to discourage reporting large numbers of
partners; these statements in this set expressed more "restrictive"
views about sex. Studies have shown that prior items can affect re-
sponses to later items (see Smith [1992b] and Tourangeau and Rasinski
[1988] for reviews). We thought that, because reports about sexual
behavior may be affected by attitudes toward sex, the permissive items
would encourage female respondents to admit how many partners they
had and that the restrictive items would encourage male respondents
to admit how few they had.
Method
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286 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
tained two items on AIDS risk and a series of items on condom use.
The fifth section of the questionnaire included several items on illicit
drug use. The interview concluded with a few questions assessing atti-
tudes toward abortion and the legalization of marijuana.
The questions were mostly drawn from existing sources. The bulk
of the items in the questionnaire were taken from an earlier study-the
Women's Health Study-conducted as a pretest for Cycle V of the
National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG; see Jobe et al. [in press]).
Most of the items in that study were taken from earlier cycles of the
NSFG. The sex partner items in the questionnaire were quite similar
to those used in a series of supplements to the General Social Surveys
(GSS); the only difference is that the GSS items asked about partners
since age 18 rather than over the lifetime. The items on illicit drug use
were modeled on those used in the National Household Survey of
Drug Abuse (see, e.g., Turner, Lessler, and Gfroerer 1992).
Experimental design. Prior to screening, each HU was randomly
assigned to an experimental condition; the data collection mode vari-
able was crossed with the context and format of the sex partner items,
producing a total of 12 conditions. Random assignment was done
within segments to assure that the experimental conditions were not
confounded with geographic areas.
The main experimental variable was the mode of data collection:
respondents were assigned to data collection by computer-assisted
personal interview (CAPI), computer-assisted self-administered inter-
view (CASI), or audio computer-assisted self-administered interview
(ACASI). With CAPI, the questions appeared on a computer screen
and were read to the respondent by the interviewer; the interviewer
then entered the response. With CASI, the identical program was used,
but the respondent interacted directly with the computer. The inter-
viewer merely entered the respondent's identification number at the
outset and gave the respondent some brief instructions about how to
complete the interview. The first few items in the questionnaire were
in fact practice questions and allowed the respondents to familiarize
themselves with the response procedure. The very first item-which
asked for the respondent's date of birth-was the most demanding
item in the questionnaire in terms of keystrokes; respondents had to
enter in turn the numbers corresponding to the month, day, and year
in which they were born. None of the respondents had any apparent
difficulty with this or subsequent items. Each question appeared by
itself on the screen; along the top of the screen, the program displayed
brief instructions to remind respondents how to back up to a previous
question, move forward to the next question, and indicate their refusal
to answer a question. With ACASI, the information displayed on the
screen was identical to the information displayed in the CAPI and
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Asking Sensitive Questions 287
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288 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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Asking Sensitive Questions 289
Results
The analysis examines three main issues: the impact of the different
modes of data collection on participation in the study (i.e., on unit
nonresponse); the effects of mode, question context, and format of the
questions on responses to the sexual behavior items; and the effect of
mode on responses to the questions on illicit drug use. Because the
sample was clustered by area segment, we analyzed the data using
SUDAAN, which uses Taylor Series approximation to estimate stan-
dard errors and compute significance tests (Shah et al. 1993). However,
because of the experimental design we used (in which the experimental
factors were crossed with area segments), the SUDAAN standard er-
rors were consistently smaller than those computed under the assump-
tion of simple random sampling. Similarly, in every case, the signifi-
cance levels were more extreme when we used SUDAAN to take the
clustering into account than when we ignored the clustering. As a
result, we report the inferential statistics from the analyses that assume
a simple random sample. In every case where the results differed, this
is the conservative approach. In general, these differences involved
higher-order interaction terms with no clear interpretation.
Unit nonresponse. We examined nonresponse in the initial wave of
interviewing. The overall response rate for this wave was 56.8 percent
(365 completed interviews out of 643 eligible cases).' The response
rates did not differ significantly by mode of data collection. Of the 211
cases assigned to ACASI data collection, 55.5 percent (117) completed
the interview; of the 220 assigned to CAPI, 57.7 percent (127) com-
pleted the interview; and of the 212 assigned to CASI, 57.1 percent
(121) completed the interview. There were also no significant differ-
ences in refusal rates by mode, although the refusal rate was somewhat
lower among the CASI (22.7 percent) than among the ACASI (42.4
percent) and CAPI (34.9 percent) cases.
Even though the overall levels of participation were similar across
modes of data collection, it is still possible that different types of re-
spondent tended to complete interviews under the different modes.
1. Although the overall response rate for the study may seem low, the sample was
restricted to residents of a single large metropolitan area; many surveys have relatively
low response rates in such areas. In Cycle IV of the National Survey of Family Growth
(NSFG), e.g., the response rate in the 10 largest metropolitan areas was below 60 percent
(Rieger, Judkins, and Sperry 1991). The NSFG sample covers a similar age range and
the questionnaire covers similar content areas to those used here.
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290 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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Asking Sensitive Questions 291
2. Because random assignment occurred prior to screening, the final cell sizes differ
across the experimental groups. As a result, we used analysis of variance procedures
suitable for unbalanced designs. The effect of the unequal Ns by group is to reduce the
power of the analyses somewhat.
3. The sex partner items asked respondents about the numbers of persons with whom
they had sexual intercourse. It is possible that respondents omit certain types of persons
in answering these questions. We included two follow-up questions to examine this
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292 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
Females 1.60 .51 187 2.73 .83 188 4.79 1.20 188
Males 2.92 .80 106 5.17 1.12 104 8.35 1.62 104
F (p) 9.29 (<.01) 7.69 (<.01) 9.18 (<.01)
ACASI 2.26 .67 86 4.52 1.01 87 7.05 1.45 88
CAPI 2.14 .59 103 3.44 .95 103 5.51 1.33 102
CASI 1.87 .60 104 2.99 .85 102 5.75 1.28 102
F (p) .93 (n.s.) 2.19 (n.s.) 3.03 (<.05)
Open 1.65 .50 102 3.12 .85 102 7.20 1.45 103
Closed-low 1.43 .43 105 2.62 .78 103 4.73 1.23 103
Closed-high 3.38 .98 86 5,33 1.21 87 6.28 1.37 86
F (p) 14.05 (<.001) 7.03 (<.01) 2.35 (<.10)
Permissive context 1.88 .57 148 2.95 .85 145 5.77 1.34 146
Restrictive context 2.28 .66 145 4.24 1.01 147 6.34 1.36 146
F (p) 2.92 (<.10) 4.03 (<.05) .52 (n.s.)
There were significant main effects for all three of the experimental
variables. For all three time periods, ACASI elicited the highest mean
number of reported sex partners. The effect of data collection was
significant for the lifetime reports and marginally significant for the
5-year reports: F(2,256) = 3.03 (p =.05) for the lifetime data and
F(2,256) = 2.19 (p < .12) for the 5-year data. An additional contrast
revealed that, for both lifetime and 5-year reports, ACASI yielded
significantly higher numbers of reported partners, on average, than
CASI did-F(1,256) = 5.95 (p < .05) for the lifetime and F(1,256) =
4.35 (p < .05) for the 5-year data. For the 1-year and 5-year periods,
the closed item with the high-response categories elicited the highest
level of reporting and the closed item with the low-response categories,
the lowest; in both cases, the open item produced intermediate levels
of reporting. The effect of item format was significant for both the
1-year and 5-year data: F(2,257) = 14.05 (p < .001) for the 1-year data
possibility. After the lifetime sex partner question, male respondents were asked
whether they had omitted any contacts with prostitutes from their lifetime tallies; female
respondents were asked if they had omitted any males who had used force or threats
to have intercourse with them. The corrections based on responses to these questions
were quite small and did not affect the results. The results presented here are based on
the uncorrected lifetime sex partner data.
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Asking Sensitive Questions 293
and F(2,256) = 7.03 (p < .01) for the 5-year data.4 Finally, the restric-
tive context elicited higher numbers of sex partners than the permis-
sive context for all three time periods; however, this "backfire" effect
was significant only for the 5-year data-F(1,256) = 4.03 (p < .05)-
and the effect of context was qualified by higher-order interactions. A
potential complication here is that the permissive and restrictive items
may have differed in their effectiveness. Overall, the permissive items
elicited lower levels of support than the restrictive items did; averaging
across the items, only about 58 percent of the respondents agreed with
the permissive context items, whereas 78 percent of the respondents
agreed with the restrictive ones. Some of the respondents apparently
found the permissive items a little too permissive.
The data in table 3 show the usual discrepancy between men and
women in the reported number of sex partners. We expected this dis-
crepancy to be reduced when the questions were self-administered.
Moreover, we expected the impact of self-administration to differ by
sex-with males reporting fewer partners and women more partners-
under the two self-administered modes than under the interviewer-
administered mode. The results in figure 1, which plots the means of
the transformed sex partner reports by sex and mode of data collec-
tion, are consistent with these hypotheses. For all three time periods,
the disparity between the number of sex partners reported by men and
women was largest under CAPI; in addition, CAPI yielded the highest
level of reporting for the men and the lowest level for the women.
However, none of the mode-by-sex interactions was significant. The
two-way interactions apparent in figure 1 were qualified by higher-
order effects involving the context variable. Figure 2 graphs the means
for each combination of data collection mode, respondent sex, and
item context. The three-way interactions were significant for both the
1-year and lifetime reports: F(2,257) = 5.10 (p < .01) for the 1-year
data and F(2,256) = 3.71 (p < .05) for the lifetime data. The patterns
apparent in figure 1 were far more pronounced among respondents
who received the restrictive context items than among those who re-
ceived the permissive items. Within the restrictive context groups, the
4. These findings on the effects of item format are somewhat at odds with results from
an experiment on the General Social Survey. The GSS experiment showed no significant
differences between open and closed formats in the number of sex partners reported.
As in the present experiment, GSS respondents in the closed conditions were asked a
follow-up item to determine their exact number of partners. The GSS offered closed-
response options intermediate between those used in the closed-high and closed-low
conditions here; the closed GSS item included 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-9, 10-20, 21-100, and
101 or more partners as response options. The trend in the GSS data was toward in-
creased reporting in the closed condition. For example, respondents reported a mean
of 3.1 partners in the past 5 years in the closed condition vs. a mean of 2.3 partners in
the open condition.
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296 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
5. One other significant interaction effect emerged from the analysis of the sex partner
data-a three-way interaction between the mode of data collection, the sex of the re-
spondent, and the response format of the sex partner items. The effect was significant
only for the 5-year partner data and was not readily interpretable.
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298 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
6. As is not surprising, the format and context of the sex partner items had no apparent
effect on responses to the drug use questions.
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Asking Sensiltive Questions 299
Marijuana:
Lifetime 66.3 89 44.8 105 58.0 112 9.39 (<.01)
Past year 26.1 92 16.2 105 16.1 112 4.15 (.13)
Past month 17.4 92 10.5 105 12.5 112 2.13 (n.s.)
Cocaine:
Lifetime 20.4 93 11.3 106 11.4 114 4.45 (.11)
Past year 5.4 92 1.9 106 2.6 114 2.19 (n.s.)
Past month 3.3 92 1.9 106 1.8 114 <1 (n.s.)
Discussion
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300 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
NOTE.-Sex partner data are untransformed counts. See table 1 for definition of ac-
ronyms.
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Asking Sensitive Questions 301
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302 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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304 Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith
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