caa a22 4500 475847377 CHVBK 20180406123918.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170329e20000501xx s 000 0 eng 10.1023/A:1008971602505 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1023/A:1008971602505 The impact of different response alternatives on responders' reporting of health-related behaviour in a postal survey [Elektronische Daten] [Keith Meadows, Tim Greene, Lorrain Foster, Steven Beer] Previous experimental research in other topic areas has shown that the choice of response alternatives can influence respondents' reporting of the frequency of vaguely defined events and that the set of response alternatives is treated as information in the interpretation of the question. The aim of this study was to examine whether such affects would occur in the context of respondents reporting of health-related events using high and medium frequency closed format response categories, which might be used interchangeably by researchers. The study consisted of a postal survey of n = 518 patients aged ≥≥18 years randomly selected from the patient list of a diabetes centre and who were equally and randomly allocated to one of three conditions (Condition A: high frequency response alternatives/horizontal orientation; condition B: medium frequency response alternatives/horizontal orientations; condition C: high frequency response alternatives/vertical orientation). Testing for the effect of response alternatives for the combined responses of five vaguely defined questions between conditions A and B was χ2 = 5.5, p = 0.019, for the difference in proportions, indicating that overall, those respondents presented with response alternatives discriminating at medium frequency, reported significantly fewer target events than those presented with high frequency response alternatives. Testing for the effect of orientation of the combined question responses between conditions A and C, differences in proportions between conditions, did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.05). Findings from this and previous studies indicate that response alternatives provide information on the interpretation of vaguely defined questionnaire items and that their choice should not be left to intuition alone when designing questionnaire items. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000 Diabetes nationallicence Health status nationallicence Questionnaire nationallicence Response alternatives nationallicence Meadows Keith Health and Survey Research Unit, Applied Statistics Centre, University of Hull, UK aut Greene Tim East Riding Health Authority, UK aut Foster Lorrain Scunthorpe and Goole NHS Hospital Trust, UK aut Beer Steven Scunthorpe and Goole NHS Hospital Trust, UK aut Quality of Life Research Kluwer Academic Publishers 9/4(2000-05-01), 385-391 0962-9343 9:4<385 2000 9 11136 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008971602505 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008971602505 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Meadows Keith Health and Survey Research Unit, Applied Statistics Centre, University of Hull, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Greene Tim East Riding Health Authority, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Foster Lorrain Scunthorpe and Goole NHS Hospital Trust, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Beer Steven Scunthorpe and Goole NHS Hospital Trust, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Quality of Life Research Kluwer Academic Publishers 9/4(2000-05-01), 385-391 0962-9343 9:4<385 2000 9 11136 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer