[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Now let's talk about different types of questions and when to use them. As a part of every call, you're going to collect information from cases and contacts. And the way that people respond to you is going to depend on how you word the question. So asking questions in different ways can help collect information more effectively. Question types can also be used together, as you'll see on the next slide, where we go through all the different question types. So there are five question types, closed, open, probing, checking, and leading. A closed question is used to limit answer choices. And there can be both good or bad closed questions. A bad closed question, for example, would force someone to choose between two answers that may not represent their experience. An open question is used to generate descriptive answers that require more than one word. And so open-ended questions allow people to respond however they feel is appropriate. Probing questions are an important tool, and they are used as a follow-up question to get more information about a person's response. An example of a probing question is, can you tell me more? You're seeking more information. A checking question is used to confirm that you heard correctly. And you know that for effective communication, you need to be regularly checking in with the person you're talking to to make sure that you've heard correctly what they've said, and they've heard correctly what you said. So checking questions are good for that. Leading questions are typically ones that you want to avoid because they're guiding people into believing that they should answer in a certain way. We'll go over some examples of what these kinds of different types of questions look like. So let's imagine now that you're asking about symptoms, you're having a conversation with a case. Here are some examples of all the different types of questions that you could use asking about symptoms. So a close question about symptoms would be, do you still have a fever? Right? So this is closed because there are only two answers, yes or no. An open question about this would be, what sorts of symptoms have you had since becoming ill? To answer that question, they could provide any of the symptoms that they felt were relevant. A probing question about symptoms would be something like this, so you said things have improved, can you tell me more about how you're feeling today? So you're asking that question to get more information based off of what they've told you. A checking question related to symptoms might sound like this, on Monday you said you had a fever, is that correct? So you're asking them to confirm what you think you've heard. A leading question on symptoms would be something like this, you must be feeling fine now, right? You can see from this leading question that the person is more likely to say, yes, even though maybe they're not really feeling fine. So leading questions, again, are typically ones that you want to avoid. Now let's go through these different question types again, this time in the scenario of asking about a case's contacts. So when asking someone about what they've been doing for the past several days, you may need to ask many questions. Generally a closed question will not work in this scenario. You'll need to help people remember by walking through each day and having them get out their phones or their calendar. So a closed-ended question here though might be, have you spent an extended amount of time with anyone without a mask in the past three days? So again, it's closed. They can either answer it yes or no. An open question would be, how have you been spending your time this week since you've become sick? What about the two days before becoming sick? That's another open question. A tip here is you can ask people to check their calendars, text messages, and social media for help remembering what they did. If you wanted to ask a probing question about someone's contacts, you might say something like this, oh, you went walking. Well, did you chat with anyone on the way? That might help jog their memory. A checking question about contacts would be something like this, oh, OK, you said you didn't live with anyone. Is that correct? If you wanted to just confirm. A leading question might be, so I can assume you didn't see anyone? See, they're leading you to say, no, no, I didn't see anyone. A better way to find out about contacts is through probing or open-ended questions. In this vignette, you're going to hear again about Larry and Drew, the contact tracer. And Drew misses some opportunities to apply different question types that could be more effective. After watching this interaction, let's follow up and we'll see what mistakes Drew made. DREW: Thanks for telling me about your symptoms. Now, I'd like to understand about what you did and who you saw over the past week. You didn't see anyone, right? LARRY: Well, no. DREW: Got it. Did you do anything? LARRY: No, like I said, I haven't done anything except stay at home, just like everyone else. DREW: OK, thanks for letting me know. LARRY: Yeah. SPEAKER: So in this vignette, Drew is interviewing Larry about his contacts. You can see at the beginning where he says, you didn't see anyone, right? He's using a leading question, and that could cause Larry to feel like he should answer in a certain way. And Larry answers, well, no. Then Drew asked a closed question as a follow-up, doesn't help Larry think through the details of their activities. He just says, did you do anything? So let's take a look now at another vignette of a better way to ask these types of questions. In this vignette, you're going to hear about Larry's conversation with Amy. Amy uses many different types of questions in a more effective way to understand who Larry may have had contact with. After you watch this vignette, we'll follow up and see what Amy did. AMY: All right, Larry, thanks for telling me about your symptoms. So now I'd like to understand a bit about what you did and who you saw over the past week. LARRY: OK, well, like I said, I haven't done anything except stay at home, just like everyone else. [COUGHS] AMY: OK, so you've been staying at home. Earlier you said that when you started feeling sick, you went to the doctor. Did you take the train there? LARRY: No, I had my truck. AMY: OK, so you took your truck, you drove over to the doctor, and then you came on back. What did you do when you got back from the doctor's? LARRY: Well, I ran into my neighbors on the way back and just chatted with them for a while. It was good, then I went home and just got some rest. AMY: OK. OK, so you ran into your neighbors on your way home, and then what did you do for the rest of the day? LARRY: I just chilled on the couch. SPEAKER: So as you heard, Amy use some closed and probing questions to determine whether Larry had used public transportation at all when he went to the doctor. After that, she used further probing questions to uncover more about the activities that he did during the day. And you can see after that probing question, Larry did remember some other activities. And it's important to understand these activities because that will give you a more complete list of who his contacts were. And finally, Amy asked another probing question to encourage Larry to go through even in more detail what he did for the rest of the day. So these are the types of probing questions you want to ask in this kind of scenario to have a more effective communication and a more complete list of Larry's contacts.
