Survey Methods

Most measures of public attitudes or stigma ask people about various aspects of disorders or their own reactions to them. In studies of stuttering, a wide variety of data collection methods have been used: paper-and-pencil questionnaires (Blood, Blood, Tellis, & Gabel, 2003; Boyle, Blood, & Blood, 2009; Gabel, Blood, Tellis, & Althouse, 2004; Hulit & Wertz, 1994; Klein & Hood, 2004), semantic differential scales (Doody, Kalinowsky, Armson & Stuart, 1993), questions to store clerks who had just spoken with a severe stutterer (McDonald & Frick, 1954), face-to-face interviews with people on the street (Van Borsel, Verniers, & Bouvry, 1999), telephone interviews (Craig, Tran, & Craig, 2003; Ham, 1990), open-ended written statements (Ruscello, Lass, Schmitt, & Pannbacker, 1994), and extended tape-recorded interviews (Corcoran & Stewart, 1998; St. Louis, 2001), among others. A similar range of methods has been used with other conditions, and other innovative methods have been reported as well. For example, health professionals have directly rated the amount of stigma associated with health conditions using global “quality of life” measures (Craig, Blumgart, & Craig, 2009; Ustun, et al., 1999).