ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the obstacles to knowledge that are both the bane and the joy of the social-science researcher—especially of the social scientist who works with questionnaires. The complexity of human responses is both the source of our interest as social scientists, and an obstacle to learning about people and their behavior. The main human-response obstacles that the researcher must contend with are these: lack of knowledge by subjects about what they do and why they do it; fallibility of people’s memory about their past behavior; and covering up of information that subjects think shameful or do not want to reveal. Most important is to be alert to the possibility of deception; research is no place for a sweet belief in the goodness of human nature. One of the ways that we can learn about human behavior is to ask people how they have acted or what has happened in the past.
