Thus far, there has been little discussion about how we construct, define or accept human rights. What rights should actually count as human rights for social work practice? Do we simply accept the Universal Declaration, do we add to it, do we subtract from it, or do we reformulate it? On reading the Universal Declaration (see website for details), one is struck by how many of the rights contained in it are violated daily for millions of people. This applies not only to developing nations or nations with a ‘human rights record’ that is seen as ‘poor’. It also applies to the so-called ‘developed’ world, where the rights outlined in the Universal Declaration are certainly not all adequately met for the whole population. What country, for example, can clearly demonstrate the full realisation of the right to equality before the law, the right to work and to free choice of work, higher education equally accessible and inclusive for all for desire to attend, and other rights?

Following on from the previous chapter on questionnaire-based elicitation of quantitative data, this chapter outlines how open-ended questionnaire items can be used to elicit qualitative language attitudes data. These items invite the respondent to freely answer a question with a few words, sentences, or a paragraph of free writing, thereby eliciting idiosyncratic responses. Open-ended items provide complex and potentially unexpected information on the different attitude components and can thus play a complementary role to closed-ended items in the evaluation of attitudes. The chapter guides the reader through a wide range of ways to use open-ended items and discusses their strengths as well as weaknesses. Building on the preceding chapter, key issues of study design are added, including the choice of open-ended question types and factors that inform decisions of participant sampling. The chapter instructs the reader how to pilot a questionnaire and how to conduct (inductive or deductive) qualitative content analysis. Finally, it addresses ethical concerns of privacy and confidentiality. A case study on attitudes towards different varieties of English in Fiji serves as illustration of the main points made in the chapter.