Aware of the nature and influence of biased questions

Question Bias

A second distinction among question types can be made on the basis of bias. Most of us probably are familiar with the story of the politician who publicly asked his opponent, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Often questions such as these occur in interpersonal situations as well. You do want to join the union, don't you? and How do you feel about those stupid shop rules? are questions that carry as many leading implications as Have you stopped beating your wife? While questions like these may not produce serious problems in everyday conversation, they have definite impact in interviews. To conduct interviews effectively we must be aware of the nature and influence of biased questions.

As with restricted and unrestricted questions, unbiased and biased inquiries range along a continuum from very unbiased to highly biased. The examples used in the preceding section typify unbiased questions. Inquiries such as How do you feel about your job? say virtually nothing about the interviewer's own feelings; the question is stated neutrally. Somewhat more leading is the question. You like to work with machines, don't you? And, at the very biased end of the scale, Do you support our suike, or are you dirty pinko commie scab? Because these three

. questions vary in their revelations of the interviewer's feelings, they exert different degrees of pressure upon the interviewee to respond appropriately.

In deciding whether to use biased, moderately biased, or unbiased questions, we first must take into account our purpose in the interview. If we are seeking the interviewee's true feelings or attitudes, we probably would avoid biased questions If, however, we are trying to persuade the interviewee, biased questions can be extremely useful. Research in attitude change suggests that if we can get an interviewee to state a certain opinion, he is likely to adopt that opinion as his own. Thus, if the interviewee initially has no intention of SUPP011ing our strike but, because of social pressure, responded yes to our "dirty pinko commie scab" question, he would be much more likely to support the strike when it actually

occurs.