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Summary: Ch. 10 Questionnaire and Form Design

To collect or obtaining quantitative primary data, a researcher must design a questionnaire or an observation form. Questionnaire or Observation form: A structured technique for data collection that consists of a series of questions, written or verbal, that a respondent answers. A questionnaire has three objectives. (1 st) It must translate the information needed into a set of specific questions the respondents can and will answer. (2nd) It must motivate respondents to complete the interview. (3 rd) It must also minimize response error. Designing a questionnaire is an art rather than a science. There are no scientific principles that guarantee and optimal or ideal questionnaire. The process begins by (1) specifying the information needed. As the research project progresses, the information needed becomes more and more clearly defined. Questions that are appropriate for college students may not be appropriate for housewives. And (2) specifying the type of interviewing method. There are mail questionnaire, telephone questionnaire, personal questionnaire, electronic questionnaire. The type of interviewing method also influences the content of individual questions. The next step (3) is to decide on or determined the content of individual questions. If there is no satisfactory use for the data resulting from a question, that question should be eliminated. Sometimes, several questions are needed to obtain the required information in an unambiguous manner because there is also a question called double-barreled question, two or more questions are combined into one. Double-barreled Question: A single question that attempts to cover two issues. Such questions can be confusing to respondents and result in ambiguous responses. The question should overcome the respondents inability and unwillingness to answer (4). Respondents may be unable to answer if they are not informed, cannot remember, or cannot articulate the response. In situations where not all respondents are likely to be informed about the topic of interest, filter questions that measure familiarity, product use, and past experience should be asked before questions about the topics themselves. Filter Question: An initial question in a questionnaire that screens potential respondents to ensure they meet the requirements of the sample. The inability to remember leads to errors of omission, telescoping, and creation. Omission is the inability to recall an event that actually took place. Creation error takes place when a respondent remembers an event that did not actually occur. Telescoping: A psychological phenomenon that takes place when an individual telescopes or compresses time by remembering an event as occurring more recently than it actually occurred. Respondents may be unable to articulate certain types of responses. For example, if asked to describe the atmosphere of the department store they would prefer to patronize, most respondents may be unable to phrase their answers. The unwillingness of the respondents to answer must also be overcome, either because too much effort is required, the situation or context may not seem appropriate for disclosure, no legitimate purpose or need for the information requested is apparent, or the information requested is sensitive. Then comes the decision regarding the question structure (5). Questions can be unstructured (open ended) or structured to a varying degree. Structured questions include multiple choice, dichotomous questions, and scales. Unstructured Questions: Open-ended questions that respondents answer in their own words. Structured Questions: Questions that prespecify the set of response alternatives and the response format. A structured question could be multiple choice, dichotomous, or a scale. Two additional concerns in designing multiple-choice questions are the number of alternatives that should be included and order or position bias. Order or position bias: A respondents tendency to check an alternative merely because it occupies a certain position or is listed in a certain order. Dichotomous Questions: a structured question with only two response alternatives, such as yes and no.

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Determining the working of each question (6) involves defining the issue, using ordinary words, using unambiguous words, and using dual statements or statements stated positively or negatively. A question should clearly define the issue being addressed. Ordinary words should be used in a questionnaire and they should match the vocabulary level of the respondents. The words used in a questionnaire should have a single meaning that is known to the respondents. The researcher also should avoid leading questions, implicit alternatives, implicit assumptions, and generalizations and estimates. Leading Question: A question that gives the respondent a clue as to what answer is desired or leads the respondent to answer in a certain way. Implicit Alternative: An alternative that is not explicitly expressed. Once the questions have been worded, the order in which they will appear in the questionnaire must be decided (7). Special consideration should be given to opening questions, type of information, difficult questions, and the effect on subsequent questions. The type of information obtained in a questionnaire may be classified as: Classification Information: Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics used to classify respondents. Identification Information: A type of information obtained in a questionnaire that includes name, address, e-mail address, and phone number. Question that going from general to specific is called the funnel approach. Funnel Approach: A strategy for ordering questions in a questionnaire in which the sequence starts with general questions that are followed by progressively specific questions in order to prevent specific questions from biasing general questions. The questions should be arranged in logical order. All of the questions that de3al with a particular topic should be asked before beginning a new topic. Branch Questions: Question used to guide an interviewer through a survey by directing the interviewer to different spots on the questionnaire depending on the answers given. The stage is now set for determining the form and layout of the questions (8). The questions in each part should be numbered, particularly when branching questions are used. The questionnaires should preferably be precoded. Precoding: In questionnaire design, assigning a code to every conceivable response before data collection. Several factors are important in reproducing the questionnaire (9). These include: appearance, use of booklets, fitting entire question on a page, response category format, avoiding overcrowding, placement of directions, color coding, easy-to-read format, and cost. Last but not least is pretesting (10). Pretesting: The testing of the questionnaire on a small sample of respondents for the purpose of improving the questionnaire by identifying and eliminating potential problems. Important issues are the extent of pretesting, nature of respondents, type of interviewing method, type of interviewers, sample size, protocol analysis and debriefing, and editing and analysis. The design of observational forms requires explicit decisions about what is to be observed and how that behavior is to be recorded. It is useful to specify the who, what, when, where, why, and way of the behavior to be observed. The questionnaire should be adapted to the specific cultural environment and should not be biased in terms of any one culture. Also, the questionnaire may have to be suitable for administration by more than one method because different interviewing methods may be used in different countries. Several ethical issues related to the researcher-respondent relationship and the researcher-client relationship may have to be addressed. The Internet and computers can greatly assist the researcher in designing sound questionnaires and observational forms.