1. A.N. Oppenheim, Questionnaire Design
Questionnaires
A.N. Oppenheim, Questionnaire Design

2. Questionnaires
FOCUS
What is the focus of your questionnaire?

3. Questionnaires
The focus of your questionnaire is your research question
All questions in your questionnaire need to be relevant to your research question.

4. Questionnaires
To help further with the focus identify intended audience for your questionnaire – is it a particular organisation, a particular group of people, or everyone?

5. Questionnaires
ELEMENTS
What are the parts of a questionnaire?

6. Questionnaires PREAMBLE
Explain what the survey is for “This survey sets out to ...”
Reassure the participants “Please note if you fill in this questionnaire, your answers will be treated in highly confidential way. Neither I, the Dublin Institute of Technology nor any other third part will identify your name, address or any other personal details, nor will it be possible to identify you in any way in the report I will publish as part of my MSc dissertation. I would like to personally thank you for your time in taking part in this survey.”

7. Questionnaires TYPES OF QUESTIONS Open-ended Close-ended
Combination of both

8. Questionnaires
Open-ended Close-ended

9. Questionnaires Open-ended Slower to administer
Harder to record responses
Does not stifle response
Answerer can raise new issues
Answerer feels they can speak their mind
What does a blank answer mean ?

10. Questionnaires Close-ended Faster to administer
Easier to record responses
Answerer can only give predefined answers
Answerer cannot raise new issues
Answerer feels constrained
More likely to answer all questions (box tick)

11. Questionnaires LIKERT SCALES
A special type of close-ended question is where you get the respondent to classify their responses on a scale of 1 to 5 (or in any five ordinal categories).

12. Questionnaires LIKERT SCALES Poor, Weak, O.K., Good, Excellent
Very Low, Low, O.K., High, Very High
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

13. Questionnaires LIKERT SCALES
To make life easier for yourself, you don’t need to label each of the five values if you don’t need to.
Very Bad Very Good

14. Thank them CLOSING REMARKS
"Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey"

15. Questionnaires
DESIGN
How will I design the questions?

16. Questionnaires
Think clearly about questions (need to constrain answers as much as possible)
Make sure results will answer your research question
You can use the Internet for conducting surveys if you need to cover wide geographic reach

17. Questionnaires Check your grammar, twice
It’s a proofreaders' Rule of Thumb that if you read something twice, it gets rid of 95% of errors.

18. Questionnaires Keep questions short and simple
Avoid questions with “not”
Avoid questions with bias
Avoid sensitive questions (ask indirectly)
Do not ask compound questions, just ask one question at a time
e.g. "Do you know what services are available to you and how to find out?"

19. Questionnaires
DESIGN
How will I design the questions?

20. Questionnaires
Before you deploy to participants, deploy a few pilot versions of the questionnaire to friends, family and fellow students.
Correct any complicated, misstated, or ambiguous questions

21. Questionnaires Deployment Approaches Self-administered
Interviewer administered

22. Questionnaires Self-administered
Means you give the questionnaire to the participants and they fill it out in their own time, at their own pace.
This approach can allow you to reach large audiences, e.g. by deploying over the Internet.
The problem is that if they don’t understand a question, they will probably guess what it means, and that answer with be invalid.

23. Questionnaires Interviewer administered
Means you are present when participant or participants are filling out the questionnaire.
If you are dealing with an individual or group you can instruct them how to fill out the questionnaire; “I want everyone to start with question 1, spend about 30 seconds on that ... O.K. now move onto the next question, etc.”
If they don’t understand a question, they can ask you, and you can tell the individual or group.

24. Incentives
Survey research suggests that there is a chance that offering an incentive may add bias to a survey
e.g. Singer, E., Bossarte, R., 2006, “Incentives for Survey Participation: When Are They “Coercive”?, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 31, Issue 5, Pages

25. Incentives More refs: http://www.ijis.net/ijis1_1/ijis1_1_goeritz.pdf

26. Questionnaires
EXAMPLES
Can I see a few examples of questions?

27. Questionnaires
The following is an example of a questionnaire that was developed by a student who was comparing text-based information with a visual representation of the same information >>>

28. Questionnaires

29. Questionnaires
What do you think of the questions on the following slide >>>

30. Questionnaires

31. Over-Specified Answers Over-Specified Answers
Questionnaires
Unclear Question and
Over-Specified Answers
Compound Question and
Over-Specified Answers
Asymmetric Answers

32. Other Useful Approaches

33. Focus groups
Take time to arrange, so prepare in advance (use an intermediary to help you if you can)
Who will be in your focus group? (e.g. age, gender)
Size of focus group (8-10 is typical)
Consider whether or not to have separate focus groups for different ages or genders (e.g. discussing sex and sexuality)

34. Site visits and observation
Site visits involve visiting an organization, community project etc
Consider using a guide
Observation is when you visit a location and observe what is going on, drawing your own conclusions
Both facilitate making your research more relevant and concrete

35. Case studies
Method of capturing and presenting concrete details of real or fictional situations in a structured way
Good for comparative analysis

36. Participatory research
Allows participation of community being researched in research process (e.g. developing research question; choosing methodology; analysing results)
Good way to ensure research does not simply reinforce prejudices and presumptions of researcher
Good for raising awareness in community and developing appropriate action plans