Intention of the question:
Question 8 is designed to capture respondents’ monthly net household income.
Findings:
As shown in Table 6, ten of the twelve test subjects named a monthly amount in euros. The remaining two respondents did not want to answer the question (no answer) or could not answer it (don’t know).
The respondent who refused to answer justified this by saying that stating the income was too private for her and that she would only answer the question - if at all - as a closed question with very rough answer categories:
The respondent who could not answer the question justified this by saying that she did not know exactly the income of the other household members and was not sure who to count as a household member and who not:
"Now I have to ask a quick question about that. My father has a girlfriend who doesn't live here but is here very often. Does that count then? [...] I would simply include her now because she is already here often. But she has her own house. [...] I know my income, but not my father's. I really don't know at all how much he earns. I could only make a rough estimate. But then there's the question of whether the girlfriend counts as well. Because then I would say I don't know. [...] I would state 'don't know' here now."
1. How do the test persons go about answering? What income do they consider?
Three test persons named income ranges instead of exact amounts. The reason for this was due to monthly fluctuating amounts due to the subjects' self-employment and/or individual household members:
The remaining seven subjects who reported their income gave a (more or less) exact amount. They considered only net salaries and government benefits (unemployment, child support) and stated that they had no other sources of income:
2. Is the definition of monthly net income understandable (especially in CATI mode)?
All but one of the test persons indicated that the explanation of what is meant by average monthly net income was "rather" or "very understandable." Subject 05 rated it as "rather incomprehensible," but noted that its content was important to answering the question:
"That was a lot of things that were mentioned. But clearly, you have to mention that, of course, so that people consider all [relevant] things."
Occasionally, interviewers reported being interrupted by respondents' spontaneous answers while the question was being read aloud. In these cases, the explanation was read aloud again or after the respondents' answers were noted, and in no case did this lead to a change in the spontaneous answer. The interview process was also not negatively affected by the interruption.
3. Do the test persons prefer a closed question?
Finally, the test subjects were asked whether they would prefer to answer a closed question with different income ranges instead of the open-ended question. The majority of test subjects (n = 9) preferred a closed question and justified this mainly on the grounds that it would make it easier to answer, especially if the amounts varied from month to month:
