Simplifying Three-way Questionnaires - Do the Advantages of Binary Answer Categories Compensate for the Loss of Information?

S. Dolnicar, University of Wollongong

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This conference paper was originally published as Dolnicar, S and Stern, D, Simplifying Three-way Questionnaires - Do the Advantages of Binary Answer Categories Compensate for the Loss of Information?, in Porceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Management Academy Conference, 2003.

Abstract

Rating scales have become a very common questionnaire answer format in marketing surveys. Apart from problems related to data analysis using ordinal data of this kind, questionnaires producing three-way data are extremely tedious for respondents to answer. The aim of this study was to investigate the differences between binary and ordinally scaled three-way data questionnaires with regard to the duration, the perceived complexity by respondents and the results with regard to the attitude profiles derived. Results indicate that the findings from ordinally scaled questionnaires do not differ sufficiently in terms of profile interpretation to justify the use of such scales in preference to binary scales, which prove to be perceived as more difficult by respondents, and objectively take more time to complete.