Week 3: Questionnaire Design

 We went through the research process ◦ Original Article vs. Secondary source ◦ How to find and read a paper ◦ Scientific writing style ◦ Research Treasure Hunt ◦ Maths questionnaire  This week: Issues with questionnaire design

 Sampling  Consent  Question types  Answer types  Questionnaire design  Coding  Issues with questionnaires handout  Fast food questionnaire

 Who to ask: your target population  How many people  Avoid a biased sample, e.g. if asking about drinking behaviour in men and women: ◦ Don’t just ask women ◦ Don’t just ask people in a bar ◦ Don’t just ask tee-totallers

 You must adhere to a strict code of ethics in your research: uments/code_of_ethics_and_conduct.pdf  Participants must: ◦ give consent to take part ◦ not be coerced into participating ◦ be free to withdraw at any time

 Participants create their own answers ◦ “What is your age?” ◦ “Are you a smoker?” ◦ “What are your favourite TV programmes?” ◦ “How much do you like biscuits?”

 Experimenter provides participants with options ◦ Choice of category:- Are you a smoker? Never smoked / Current smoker / Ex-smoker ◦ Likert scale: - How strongly do you agree with the statement “I like biscuits” Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree ◦ Checklists: Circle the TV programmes that you watch ◦ Rating scales: How much do you like this drink, on a scale of 1- 10?

 Open-Ended ◦ Exploratory ◦ Useful when you can’t cover all the possible answers ◦ Impractical in terms of analysis  Closed-Format ◦ Easy and quick to fill in ◦ Doesn’t matter how literate or articulate you are ◦ Easy to code, record, and analyse results quantitatively ◦ Easy to report results

 If the answer to the question is a number that represents an amount, e.g. ◦ IQ score ◦ Height ◦ How long it takes to complete a jigsaw puzzle ◦ Likert scale responses  Top tip: Calculating a mean makes sense with continuous data (but not with categorical data)

 Please give an approximation of the number of alcoholic drinks you normally consume on a Saturday night: … Drinks  Please indicate your agreement with the following statement: ◦ I feel that I should drink less on a Saturday night □ □ □ □ □ Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Disagree Agree

 If the answer to the question is: ◦ a word  “Yes” ◦ a description  “ Physics student” ◦ a code that represents a category  1 = undergraduate, 2 = postgraduate  NB: Numerical codes can be used to represent categorical responses BUT this does not transform categorical data into continuous data

 In which town were you born? …….  Please indicate your gender: □ Male □ Female  Which actor is the hunkiest? □ Brad Pitt □ Johnny Depp □ Orlando Bloom

 “Please indicate your age:” ◦ Continuous: … Years ◦ Categorical : □ □ □ 31–35 □ 36–40 etc. ◦ Categorical :... Years □ Older than 60 Years  “How many days a week do you usually exercise?” ◦ Continuous : … days ◦ Continuous : □ 1 day □ 2 days □ 3 days □ 4 days □ 5 days □ 6 days □ 7 days ◦ Categorical : □ 1 day □ 2 days □ 3 days □ 4 days □ 5 days or more  This can be applied to a number of data

 Be short and simple  Start with an introduction/ welcome message  Allow not applicable responses to all possibly relevant questions  Say thank you to participants

 Go from general to particular  Go from easy to difficult  Go from factual to abstract  Not start with demographic and personal questions (put these at the end)

 Assure anonymity ◦ Assign each questionnaire a number instead of asking for names  Avoid personal and sensitive questions  Be aware that you may bias answers simply by being there  Avoid biased wording ◦ e.g. “Would you agree that the death penalty is a bad idea?”

 Giving numbers to categories in categorical data is called coding ◦ e.g. “Yes” becomes 1 and “No” becomes 2  Codes can be allocated either before the question is answered (pre-coding) or afterwards (post-coding)

 Work through the ‘Issues with questionnaire design’ handout ◦ Decide whether the questions are categorical or continuous ◦ Code categorical questions ◦ Decide whether or not the questions are problematic ◦ Suggest how you would rectify any problems  Top tip: Not all the questions are problematic!

 Open “Fast food study” on Graham’s website  Read the introduction and survey

 2 Continuous Hypotheses: - ◦ Should be tested with a categorical question and the continuous question (Purchases). ◦ e.g. “Males consume a larger quantity of fast food per month than females”

In groups:  Discuss what categorical questions might affect fast food purchases (based on last week’s research)  Come up with two hypotheses  Next week: entering and analysing data in SPSS