Aided Recall

Applications

This question technique is most appropriate when the researcher is most concerned about completeness and accuracy and more worried about underreporting answers than in overreporting. Aided recall question strategies structure the range of possible answers completely and simplify the task for the respondent. They also simplify the investigator's work in gathering and analyzing the data, since no recording or coding of [Page 15]open-ended protocols is required, according to Seymour Sudman and Norman Bradburn in their classic volume, Asking Questions.

While it might seem most natural to ask respondents to self-nominate events to be recalled or criteria that they will use in decision making, they may easily forget or overlook relevant answers. This can occur for many reasons. The respondent might not take the time to think the answer through carefully and completely. The respondent might think that certain potential aspects of his or her answer are not relevant or appropriate and so are omitted. Respondents might not want to take the time needed to respond to the questions or could be hurried along by an interviewer. Difficult or time-consuming tasks might encourage respondents to satisfice—that is, to report what comes to mind as the first acceptable answer or use other mental shortcuts—rather than optimizing their answers by making them as complete and thoughtful as possible. When forgetting seems particularly likely, aided recall questions should be used, as recommended by Sudman and Bradburn.

Aided recall questions are common in the survey literature. An example will help to clarify the strategy, as will a contrast to unaided recall. To ask respondents about where they typically obtain public affairs information, one might simply ask a broad, open-ended question and attempt to code the responses until the respondent had been thoroughly probed and had nothing else to say. This would be an example of unaided recall. The respondent would be given no clues to limit or steer the scope of the inquiry and would have to conduct a thorough information search of his or her own memory to think of possible answers as well as to screen them in terms of appropriateness. If the respondent answered by mentioning radio, television, and newspapers, the interviewer might probe further by asking if there were any other sources. Uncertain of how detailed to make the answer, at that time the respondent might mention magazines. The person might not have thought that online sources of information were appropriate or may simply not think of them at the time. Another possibility is that an additional interviewer probe might have elicited online sources.

A variation on this general topic domain using an aided recall strategy might ask about what sources the respondent used for public affairs information in the past week and then might proceed to list a number of such sources. By listing each source explicitly and asking whether or not the respondent used it, the survey designer is enhancing completeness and prompting the respondent to think of the meaning of the topic in the same way. In this way there is less opportunity for the respondent to overlook possible categories, but he or she may feel under more pressure to agree to more categories for fear of appearing uninformed. Sources that might be mentioned in the answer include daily and weekly newspapers, news magazines, local and national on-air television, cable-only television networks such as CNN, CNBC, and FOX, and the various channels of C-SPAN. They might also include various popular online sources of news such as http://Yahoo.com, http://MSN.com, Google News, and The New York Times Web site, as well as interpersonal channels of communication such as friends, coworkers, and family members. In addition to all of these clearly specified information channels, one should also probe for other responses not listed.

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