Unaided Recall

One of the first decisions a designer of a questionnaire must make is whether the information sought can best [Page 916]and most appropriately be gathered from respondents by asking questions with or without clues to the possible or most appropriate answers. A question-asking strategy that relies on as few cues as possible, or even none whatsoever, in order to encourage the respondent to spontaneously mention items of interest is known as unaided recall. Such question tools are commonly used in marketing research and other situations in which it is desirable to know the respondent's reaction to questions unprompted by previous questions or topics mentioned in previous questions. In social science surveys, it is often desirable to elicit answers unstructured by other specifie political or social ...