Response alternatives should be clear, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive. Pilot testing can help you determine whether your questions and response meet these criteria. Participants should fit into one and only one category. If you were asking participants to rate the number of times they read the newspaper in the past month, the following categories would not be mutually exclusive [0; 1-5; 5-10; 10-15; 15-20; 20-25; 25-30]. Someone who read the newspaper 15 times could accurately fit in the 10-15 and the 15-20 categories. For the categories to be exhaustive, responses must fall into at least one alternative. If you assumed that everyone reads the newspaper, you might omit the "0" category. This would be a problem for someone who prefers to obtain their news from the television or Internet rather than the newspaper.
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