Examines how interviewers can revise questionnaires to minimize troubles in interviewees' responses and to encourage positive, optimistic responses. Discusses psychometrically valid questions, revising scripted text to use yes-no questions, reformulating unclear questions to evoke positive responses, presenting scripted questions as yes-no…

Utilizing data from the national administration of a Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) baseline and follow-up survey of the first-year experience during the 2002-2003 academic year, this study explores the relationship between three curricular interventions--first-year seminars, service-learning, and learning communities--and the…