From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu Dec 26 2002 - 23:10:43 MST
Phil Osborn wrote,
> To clarify matters, raising a question does not imply
> a position on the part of the questioner, does it?
Yes it does, almost always. I have extensively studied the methodology used
for psychological assessments, educational measurements, statistical
measurements, technical auditing, and investigative interrogation. They all
suffer from this same problem. It is extremely difficult to write a totally
neutral question that merely gathers information.
Even an objective sounding question like, "How often do you back up your
PC?" clearly imply that backups should be done and that the person will be
deemed deficient if they don't perform them often enough. This type of
wording encourages people toward answering "yes" even if they don't, and
indicating higher frequencies than actually occur. It is very difficult to
reword this question to gather the information without implying what the
correct answer should be.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
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