The Range of Response Alternatives May Determine the Meaning of the Question: Further Evidence on Informative Functions of Response Alternatives

Respondents' definition of a target behavior was found to be affected by the frequency range of those response alternatives that assessed the respondents' behavior. Respondents had to report how often they felt “really annoyed.” Response scales ranged either from “less than once a year” to “more than once every 3 months,” or from “less than twice a week” to “several times a day.” Respondents who used the first scale subsequently reported more extreme examples of annoying situations than respondents who used the second one. This suggests that the range of the response alternatives induced respondents to consider different behavioral instances to be the target of the question. Moreover, the different behavioral instances activated by the response scales influenced subjects' interpretation of a related situation, even when an explicit report of an example was not required.