Table 3.

Ways of Asking About Medication Takings

Strategy	Question Asked	Type of Question	Temporality	Possibility for Response
Closed-ended questions
1	Are you taking X? Do you take X?	Interrogative Yes/no question	Temporally unlimited	Requires yes/no response. Little opportunity for patient to discuss medication-taking behavior
2	Did you take X?	Interrogative Yes/no question	Temporally limited	Requires yes/no response. Little opportunity for patient to discuss medication-taking behavior
3	So, you are taking X, Y and Z medications. 1. rising intonation (“?”) 2. falling intonation (“.”)	Declarative 1. positive assumption/neutral expectation 2. positive assumption/positive expectation Closed-ended	Temporally unlimited	1. Patient perceives expectation of adherence therefore is difficult to negate (i.e., well, no actually I'm not). 2. Patient perceives provider making statement of ‘fact’ and therefore even harder to negate
4	So you took X [this morning]	Declarative	Temporally limited	Requires yes/no response. Positive assumption presented, therefore difficult to negate
Open-ended questions
5	Which medications are you taking for your blood pressure?	Interrogative	Temporally unlimited	Requires patient to provide information, thereby allowing provider to assess patients' knowledge of medication
6	How often are you taking your X medication?	Interrogative Restricted to a number	Temporally unlimited	Requires patient to tell how often, but does not assess patients' knowledge of medication types

Temporality: unlimited, assessing usual behavior;.

Limited: assessing behavior of a specific kind and time.