On Detecting Demand Awareness by Postexperimental Questionnaire

Summary The most serious error that can occur in assessing demand awareness by postexperimental questionnaire is to score an actually aware subject as unaware (false-negative problem). Compared to this the scoring of an actually unaware subject as aware (false-positive problem) is of minor importance. In this study 576 subjects were exposed to a deception experiment and then given one of three types of awareness questionnaire (indirect, direct, or funnel). Each questionnaire type either included or did not include an orienting paragraph and saliency-control questions. The funnel questionnaire was found to be the most accurate method of assessing awareness. It misclassified few subjects who were aware by an objective criterion, while not picking up too many false positives in the process. The belief that an extended-funnel questionnaire will “suggest” too much demand awareness after the fact is challenged; the data do not support this notion.