Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.1 Chapter 9 Surveys, Questionnaires, and Polls Most commonly used quantitative method Used for obtaining information about what people do, and respondents’ attitudes or characteristics In experimental, quasi-experimental, and non- experimental research designs

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.2 What is a Survey? System for collecting comparable information across many people Self-administered or self-reports Face-to-face Telephone Mail Computer-assisted

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.3 Designing a Survey Develop the survey objective Evaluate existing questionnaires/surveys Recommended over creating your own Has undergone extensive testing and revision Minor changes are okay; substantial changes will require that you pretest or pilot test the questionnaire

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.4 Writing Your Own Questionnaire Start with literature review Designing survey items Straightforward One complete thought written in sentence or question format Respondent should know how to answer Avoid abbreviations and slang expressions Shorter items are better than long ones

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.5 Open Questions Respondents use their own words to respond Makes data less comparable and more difficult to interpret Consider what constitutes an adequate answer Build that request into the question Use a recall cue to draw participants’ attention to issue, topic, or timeframe Record everything participant says Code responses after all data is collected

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.6 Closed Questions Respondents given a question or statement and given a set of responses to select from All responses must be known in advance Creates easily comparable responses Use a recall cue or stimulus statement to draw participants’ attention to issue, topic, or timeframe

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.7 Response Sets for Closed Questions Nominal or categorical responses Exhaustive Mutually exclusive Equivalent Likert-type scales 5- or 7-point scale Includes middle or neutral response Semantic differential scales Bipolar adjectives anchor 7-point scale

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.8 Examples of Response Sets for Likert-Type Scales Very oftenFairly oftenOccasionallyRarelyNever Very positive Generally positive Mixed Generally negative Very negative Completely agree Generally agree Unsure Generally disagree Completely disagree Strongly agree AgreeUnsureDisagree Strongly disagree

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.9 Pretesting the Survey or Questionnaire Also called pilot testing Should be done if you developed a questionnaire or modified an existing one Four approaches Cognitive approach Conventional Behavior coding Expert panel

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.10 Surveys and Questionnaires as Part of a Sound Research Design Who will respond to the survey? What is the survey’s objective(s)? When will the survey be taken? Where? Why is this particular survey needed?

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.11 Sampling Issues for Surveys Sample size and response rate are not the same Response rate or return rate = number of people who provide usable responses after being asked to participate Acceptable response rates vary by survey technique May be differences in those who choose to respond and those that don’t respond Unusable responses

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.12 Survey Reliability and Validity Internal reliability must be computed for multiple item questionnaires Cronbach’s alpha Varies from 0 to 1.00 Generally.70 considered acceptable Three types of validity should be considered Content validity Face validity Construct validity

Copyright c 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.13 Analyzing Survey Data Data of all participants combined to create a picture of the whole Data is often limited to descriptive purposes Data can test existing models Data from closed questions Descriptive statistics Data from open questions Categorized or content analyzed