The Random Probe: A Technique for Evaluating the Validity of Closed Questions

Abstract

The familiar dilemma of open versus closed interview questions becomes especially acute when surveys are undertaken outside middle-class American society. Inevitable ignorance of the subtleties of another culture leads the researcher toward an open-ended approach, while his experience with the difficulties of channeling diverse free responses into a useful frame of reference and of coding enormous masses of verbal data encourages him to rely on closed questions. The method of 'random probes suggested here is intended to allow a survey researcher to eat his cake and still have a little left over.