 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009intricate question
Dear All, I am preparting a web questionnaire. In the questionnaire I present retirement plans (indicating how much pension income they will get, at what age they will enter into full retirement etc.) of hypothetical persons. The respondent chooses the plan he or she find attractive. Leaving other details aside, the following sentence appears in the instructions (since we try to approximate the respondents retirement plan): *** "The described persons work in the same industry, in the same type of job, and under similar work conditions as you do. They are as satisfied with their work as you are." Now, my question is as follows: The respondent indicates his or herlabor market status in the begining of the questionnaire. With respect to that I need to change the wording of the sentence I quoted such that it should be speaking to that person with that particular labor market status. I change the wording as below. I would like to ask if you could check if my wording suitably reads to the respondents with corresponding labor market statuses! *** If labor market status is 1, 2, 3, 4: do not change anything If labor market status is 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13: replace "you do" with "you would do" and "you are" with "you would be". If labor market status is 8: replace "do" with "did" and the second "are" with "were". *** Labor market status that the respondent chooses in the begining of the questionnaire: 1. Perform work in paid employment 2. Free profession, freelance, or independent 3. Work in family or family company 4. Searching work after job loss 5. Searching work for the first time 6. Study 7. Looking after the household 8. With pension 9. (partially) Incapable of work 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit 11. Performing for benevolence 12. Doing something else 13. Too young, still has no occupations > If labor market status is 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13: replace "you do" with > "you would do" and "you are" with "you would be". Most Americans would be puzzled by intransitive "do" in this context and spend a few seconds hunting for an object for it. We normally just use the auxiliary "would" without a main verb instead: "as you would." So far I've never known Brits to have trouble understanding that construction or find it odd, even when they don't use it themselves. ¬R >> If labor market status is 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13: replace "you do" >> with [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > far I've never known Brits to have trouble understanding that > construction or find it odd, even when they don't use it themselves. Thanks a lot. > Dear All, > [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > *** How about having the person click on the number, which takes the person to a page with the correctly worded question? (Speaking of which, I agree with Glenn about "would do", for Americans.) If you don't want to do that (though it seems easy), the usual method I've seen in questionnaires is to word the question as "The described persons work in the same industry, in the same type of job, and under similar work conditions as you do/did/would. They are as satisfied with their work as you are/were/would be." Your method seems more graceful to me, but I think people aren't used to it, and some would find it confusing. > Labor market status that the respondent chooses in the begining of the > questionnaire: > 1. Perform work in paid employment Maybe "Doing paid work for an employer (not your family)". Otherwise I think people who should pick 2 or 3 will pick this one. > 2. Free profession, freelance, or independent Replace "Free profession" with "Self-employed". Then you might not need the others. > 3. Work in family or family company Replace "in" with "for". > 4. Searching work after job loss > 5. Searching work for the first time "Searching" needs "for": "Searching for work". You can also say, "Seeking work" (and other possibilities). > 6. Study > 7. Looking after the household > 8. With pension Retired. > 9. (partially) Incapable of work > 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit I don't know what that means. > 11. Performing for benevolence Volunteering. > 12. Doing something else > 13. Too young, still has no occupations Replace "has" with "have" (cf. "perform", "work", etc. earlier in the questionnaire) and "occupations" should be "occupation". -- Jerry Friedman On Jan 19, 1:48 pm, "minimus" <spammergetthisem...@live.co.uk> wrote: > How about having the person click on the number, which takes the > person to a page with the correctly worded question? (Speaking of > which, I agree with Glenn about "would do", for Americans.) Indeed I will do it as you explained. I think my message was not clear enough in explaining it. So: people choose their labor market status and they will get a page with customized wording. > Labor market status that the respondent chooses in the begining of the > questionnaire: Thanks for the suggestions. i changed them as follows. Could you have a last look? 1. Doing paid work for an employer (not your family) 2. Self-employed (free profession, freelance, or independent) 3. Work for family or family company 4. Searching for work after job loss 5. Searching for work for the first time 6. Study 7. Looking after the household 8. Retired 9. (partially) Incapable of work I don't know what that means. I mean disabled 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit 11. Volunteer work 12. Doing something else 13. Too young, still have no occupation (cf. "perform", "work", etc. earlier in the questionnaire) What do you mean here? Before it was like this: 1. Perform work in paid employment 2. Free profession, freelance, or independent 3. Work in family or family company 4. Searching work after job loss 5. Searching work for the first time 6. Study 7. Looking after the household 8. With pension (have been advanced, AOW or early retirement) 9. (partially) Incapable of work 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit 11. Performing for benevolence 12. Doing something else 13. Too young, still has no occupations > <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > Thanks for the suggestions. i changed them as follows. Could you have a last > look? It looks good to me now, except that the one I don't understand is 10: ... > 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit ... -- Jerry Friedman It looks good to me now, except that the one I don't understand is 10: ... > 10. Have performed unpaid work with conservation of benefit It is not clear indeed, i will look at it. > <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote in message And thank you for your concern and time!!! |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.