Topic 11: Research Methodology: Questionnaire Design

Question 1

What factors need to be present in a questionnaire, to fulfill a researcher’s purposes?

Answer 1

• Relevance:
• All information collected addresses a research question
• Have a rationale/explanation for each item requesting information
• Don’t omit important questions (Some questions might help clarify answers to other questions
• Accuracy after relevance
• information is reliable and valid
• Questions should be simple, understandable, unbiased, unambiguous and non-irritating
• questionnaire design and interest in subject is NB
• Correct wording and sequence of questions is NB

Question 2

What questions should be asked about a questionnaire’s design?

Answer 2

1. What questions should be asked?
2. How should the questions be asked?
3. In what sequence should questions be asked?
4. What questionnaire layout would best serve research objectives?
5. How can the questionnaire encourage complete responses?
6. How should the questionnaire be pretested and revised?

Question 3

Describe open-ended and fixed alternative questions.

Answer 3

• Open ended questions ask respondents to answer in their own words; interviewer can probe for more detail
• Advantages: useful during exploratory research, if researcher doesn’t fully understand range of possible answers to a problem
• Researcher may discover unexpected responses to a question/problem
• Disadvantages: More expensive to process answers/data from open-ended responses (each response must be manually interpreted)
• Increased risk of interviewer bias
• Data favours better educated, wealthier individuals who tend to give longer answers
• **Fixed alternative **questions’ potential responses are standardized into groups before data collection happens
• Advantages: Require less interviewer skill, take less time and are easier to answer (higher response rates)
• Easier to do data analysis
• Disadvantages: if researcher doesn’t provide full range of potential options as choices, error is introduced
• fixed options also increases chance of social-desirability bias

Question 4

General principles to remember when designing questions?

Answer 4

• Avoid ambiguity
• Avoid unecessary complexity
• Avoid double-barreled questions
• Avoid leading questions
• Avoid burdensome questions
• Avoid making assumptions in questions
• Questions should generate variance
• Potential responses should be mutually exclusive