Building Questionnaires

Question 1

steps involved in building a questionnaire

Answer 1

1. specify info needed
2. specify type of interviewing method (mail/personal/telephone)
3. determine content of questions
4. design the questions to overcome respondent’s inability + unwillingness
5. decide question structure (structured vs unstructured)
6. determine the question wording (6 Ws)
7. arrange the questions in a proper order
8. identify form + layout
9. reproduce the questionnaire
10. eliminate bugs by pre-testing

Question 2

overcoming respondent inability to answer

Answer 2

• use filters
• include ‘i don’t know option’ to separate inability from unwillingness

Question 3

overcoming unwillingness to answer

Answer 3

• not too long
• contextualize
• use techniques (ex: projective)
• sensitive topics at the end of the questionnaire
• response categories instead of specific figures

Question 4

choosing wording

Answer 4

clarity: 6Ws
use ordinary words
avoid ambiguous words
leading questions
implicit alternatives
implicit assumptions
avoid generalization + estimates

Question 5

from interview data to building the questionnaire

Answer 5

1. identify response pattern + make preliminary conclusions
2. identify variables involved in that conclusion
3. build hypotheses for the relationship b/w variables and conclusion
4. create questions to test hypotheses
5. don’t forget socio-demographic info

Question 6

general order of questions

Answer 6

basic info
classification
identification information