Instructional set, interview context, and the incidence of "don't know" responses

Abstract

Examined a hypothesis formulated by E. J. Webb, D. T. Campbell, R. D. Schwartz, and L. Sechrest (see PA, Vol. 40:6543) that instructions emphasizing a respondent's importance to an attitude survey would result in a reduced number of "don't know" responses to the items. A 20-item questionnaire was administered to 180 undergraduates under 3 contexts: face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, and group administration. Contrary to the hypothesis, in both the telephone and group administration contexts, there were significantly more "don't knows" under the instructions emphasizing the respondents' importance than with the control instructions. There was no difference between instructional sets in the face-to-face context. Results are discussed in terms of the social environments within which the questionnaires were administered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)