Exhaustive

Exhaustive is denned as a property or attribute of survey questions in which all possible responses are captured by the response options made available, either explicitly or implicitly, to a respondent. Good survey questions elicit responses that are both valid and reliable measures of the construct under study. Not only do the questions need to be clear, but the response options must also provide the respondent with clear and complete choices about where to place his or her answer. Closed-ended or forced choice questions are often used to ensure that respondents understand what a question is asking of them. In order for these question types to be useful, the response categories must be mutually exclusive and exhaustive. That is, respondents must be given all possible options, and the options cannot overlap. Consider the following question, which is frequently used in a number of different contexts.

This question does not provide a response option for couples who are in committed relationships but are not married, whether by choice or because of legal barriers. For example, a woman who has been with a female partner for 5 years would be forced to choose either married or never married, neither of which accurately describes her life situation. Without a response option that reflects their life circumstances, those respondents may be less likely to complete the questionnaire, thus becoming nonrespondents. This question is easily improved by the addition of another response category:

In situations in which the researcher cannot possibly identify all response options a priori, or cannot assume a single frame of reference for the subject matter, an “Other [specify]” option can be added. For example, questions about religion and race always should include an “Other [specify]” option. In the case of religion, there are too many response options to list. For race, traditional measures often do not adequately capture the variety of ways in which respondents conceptualize race. Thus, an “Other [specify]” option allows respondents to describe their race in a way that is most accurate to them.