Interacting with a questionnaire: respondents’ constructions of questionnaire completion

This article explores informants’ constructions of the situation of completing a questionnaire. The data comes from a study qualitatively replicating a quantitative method in which informants were asked to think aloud when completing a questionnaire designed to identify and measure feelings and behaviours in the situation of a job loss. The thinking aloud data showed that the informants constructed the situation of completing the questionnaire as interaction and they engaged themselves in a complex social communication anchored in a local context. The article shows how the informants positioned themselves with regard to the activity of completing a questionnaire, how they constructed their choice of answers and, finally, how they positioned the psychologist who asked for the questionnaire to be completed. The article concludes by discussing potential consequences of the findings for psychological assessment in clinical practice and research. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013