Introduction

Field-coded questions are open questions from the respondents' point of view. While closed questions consist of both the question and the response options, field-coded questions consist of the question only. From the perspective of the interviewers, however, a field-coded question consists of more than just the question. The interviewers have a set of response options in front of them, and they must record the respondents' answers by checking the corresponding box. As Fowler and Mangione point out (1990: 88), field-coded questions require interviewers to be coders, because they have to classify the respondents' answers in order to be able to check one of the answer boxes.

Because the respondents are not informed of the responses they can choose from, their answers are often unformatted, that is, they do not match the response categories. Unformatted answers occur not only in response to field-coded questions. We also find them when the response options have been read to respondents. When answers are not fit for recording, in whatever context they are produced, interviewers are faced with the task of probing for a recordable answer. How do they do this? What conversational devices do interviewers employ to probe for a recordable answer?

Textbooks on survey interviewing do not offer much information on how to probe for answers, except to say that the interviewer should not probe in a directive manner.