Elastic questionare

Field-near application of survey data collection

Abstract

This writing revives a methodological dispute laid aside in the forties, when it takes the standard character of surveys into consideration. We believe that the standard requirement originating in the modernist approach to survey researches, according to which questions have to be asked verbatim every time, needs to be reconsidered due to three aspects: it is unethical, unimplementable, and produces invalid results. Thus the second half of the writing suggests researchers to use an old but hitherto not widely used survey practice what we call “flexible survey.”