About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

21 J. Fam. Violence 1 (2006)

handle is hein.journals/jfamv21 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 21, No. 1, January 2006 (© 2006) DOI: 10.1007/s 10896-005-9000-4 The Effect of Question Order on Disclosure of Intimate Partner Violence: An Experimental Test Using the Conflict Tactics Scales Ignacio Luis Ramirez1,3 and Murray A. Straus2 Published online: 13 May 2006 Two plausible but contradictory approaches to question order in research on sensitive or criminal behavior are (1) that presenting the questions in a sequence corresponding to a culturally recognized behavior pattern will facilitate disclosure, and (2) that presenting questions in random order will result in more disclosure because random order disrupts response sets. The question order of the original Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS 1) used the culturally recognized sequence approach, and the revised CTS (CTS2) used a modified random order. This experiment was designed to determine which of these two question orders results in more disclosure of physical and sexual assault of a dating partner. The standard version of the CTS2, which has the questions from each of the 5 scales interspersed in a slightly modified random order, was administered to every second student in a sample of 417 university students. The other half of the sample were given the same instrument but with the questions in the culturally recognized sequential order used in the CTS 1. The cultural sequence order begins with the socially approved behaviors in the Negotiation scale and ends with scales measuring antisocial and the criminal behavior such as the Physical Assault scale. The results indicate that the CTS2 random order produced significantly higher disclosure rates for the scales that measure criminal behavior (Physical Assault, Injury, and Sexual Coercion) and made no difference for the other CTS2 scales (Negotiation and Psychological Aggression). Although these results suggest that the CTS2 random order is the preferred approach, reasons to treat that conclusion with caution are presented. KEY WORDS: violence; dating partners; Conflict Tactics Scales; question order; injury; sexual coercion. Rossi et al. (1983) identified the five ways in which the order of questions asked could produce different re- sults. (1) Saliency effect: Question order could affect the saliency of certain topics by providing differential con- texts within which responses are elicited. For example, agreement that there are circumstances when it is ok for a husband to slap his wife's face is much higher if re- spondents are first asked the same question about a woman slapping her husband (Moore & Straus, 1995; Simon et al., 'Department of Sociology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409. 2Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824. 3To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Sociol- ogy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409; e-mail: l.ramirez@ ttu.edu. 1 2001). (2) Redundancy effect: Question order could affect answers if questions are not grouped together by topic. For example, questions on the same topic in different parts of an interview could make respondents wonder if they are being asked the same questions again and if so, whether there is some trick involved. (3) Consistency effect: A re- sponse set or pattern may occur when questions become predictable. Respondents may answer in a manner that is similar with the previous answers to portray a consistent response. (4) Fatigue effect: Respondents may grow tired of answering questions, especially if the questionnaire is long, resulting in an increase in unanswered questions, or a decrease in accuracy. (5) Rapport effect: Respondents may be nervous or hesitant in the beginning but rapport could build as the questionnaire proceeds, resulting in fewer unanswered questions and more accurate responses. 0885-7482/06/0100-0001/0 © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most