Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons^™

Comparing Survey Ranking Question Formats In Mail Surveys, Jolene Smyth, Kristen Olson, Allison Burke

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although questions that ask respondents to rank-order a list of items can be analytically valuable, responding to ranking questions typically requires a good deal of cognitive effort. This is especially true in mail questionnaires where the advantages of electronic response formats available in web surveys are inaccessible. In this article, we examine two alternative formats for ranking questions in mail surveys. Using a nationally representative mail survey of U.S. adults, this article experimentally compares ranking formats in which respondents write numbers in boxes versus selecting items for the most and second most important issues using a grid layout. Respondents to …