Demographic questions in telephone calls to a cancer information service

1 March 1993

journal article
research article
Published by Taylor & Francis in Southern Communication Journal

Vol. 58 (2) , 115-127
https://doi.org/10.1080/10417949309372894

Abstract

Questions are discourse forms that lead to structured short‐term outcomes/constrained responsive answers. The present essay describes one routine component of telephone calls to the Cancer Information Service, a moment at which CIS information specialists, for purposes of program evaluation, ask callers a series of demographic questions. These demographic questions permit few options. We discuss outcomes of these questions in terms of (1) delivering health care inforamtion, and (2) describing types of qulestions and answers in conversational interactions.

Keywords

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