Presentation 8-Questionnaire Design

Question 1

Case study

Answer 1

A detailed descriptive account of one individual, situation, organization, group, or other entity.

Question 2

Survey

Answer 2

This is a term both used to designate a specific way of collecting data and to identify a broad research strategy. Survey data collection involves gathering information from individuals, called respondents by having them respond to questions.

Question 3

Survey research

Answer 3

A broad research strategy that involves asking questions of a sample population, in a fairly short period of time, and testing
hypotheses or describing a situation based on their answers.

Question 4

Reliability

Answer 4

This refers to a measure’s ability to yield consistent results each time it is applied.

Question 5

Types of reliability

Answer 5

Internal reliability assesses the consistency of results across items within a test.

External reliability refers to the extent to which a measure varies from one use to another

Question 6

Errors in measurement

Answer 6

Random Errors
These are neither consistent nor patterned eg. A respondent may misread or mismark an item on a questionnaire. They are essentially chance errors and can occur at any point of the research project.
SYSTEMATIC ERRORS
These are consistent and patterned. They cannot cancel themselves out. These are likely to lead to false conclusions. Eg. crime, delinquency.

Question 7

Interview

Answer 7

A technique in which an interviewer reads questions to respondents and records their verbal responses.
Interviews offer the investigator a degree of flexibility not available with questionnaires.
One area of increased flexibility relates to the degree of structure built into an interview

Question 8

Structured Interviews

Answer 8

This has the least structure. All the interviewer typically has for guidance is a general topic. By developing his or her own questions and probes as the interview progresses, the interviewer explores the topic with the respondent.
The approached is called un-standardised because each interviewer ask different questions and obtains different information from each respondent. There is a heavy reliance on the skills of the interviewer to ask good questions and to keep the interview going.
This can only be done if experienced interviewers are available. This unstructured approach makes unstandardized interviewing especially appropriate for exploratory research

Question 9

Non- scheduled standardized

Answer 9

This adds more structure with the topic narrower and specific questions asked of the respondents.
However, the interview remains fairly conversational, the interviewer is free to probe, rephrase questions or take questions in whatever order best fits that particular interview.
The specific questions are of the open- ended type, allowing the respondents full freedom of expressions. Success with this type of interview requires an experienced interviewer.

Question 10

Scheduled standardized.

Answer 10

Sometimes the schedule also contains acceptable rephrasing for questions and a selection of stock probes. Scheduled standardized interviews are fairly rigid and neither interviewer or respondent allowed to depart from the structure of the schedule.
Although some questions maybe open ended, most are closed ended. In fact, some scheduled standardized interviews are quite similar to a questionnaire except that the interviewer ask the questions rather than having the respondents read them

Question 11

An interview schedule

Answer 11

contains specific instructions for the interviewer, specific questions in a fixed order, and transitions phases for the interviewer to use.

Question 12

A questionnaire

Answer 12

is a set of written questions that people respond to directly on the form itself without the aid of an interviewer.

Question 13

What does a questionnaire do

Answer 13

They are so designed that they can be answered without assistance. Of course, if a researcher hands a questionnaire to a respondent as we sometimes do, the respondent then has the opportunity to ask the researcher to clarify anything that is ambiguous.

A good questionnaire however should not require such assistance. In fact, researchers often mail questionnaires to respondents who thus have no opportunity to ask questions. The burden is therefore on the researchers to design questionnaires that

respondents can compete without assistance.

Question 14

Structure and Design

Answer 14

One of the simplest and most important, tasks of questionnaire construction is the inclusion of precise directions for respondents.

If we want them to place an X in a box corresponding to the answer we will tell them precisely to do so. At each place in the questionnaire where the format changes, we include additional directions.

Question 15

Order of questions

Answer 15

An element of questionnaire construction that takes careful consideration is the proper ordering of questions.

Careless ordering can lead to undesirable consequences, such as a reduced response rate or biased responses to questions. Generally, questions asked early in the questionnaire should not bias answers to those questions that come later.

Ordering of questions can also increase a respondent’s interest in answering a questionnaire, this is especially helpful for boosting response rates n mailed questionnaires.

Question 16

General rules for designing questions

Answer 16

1.Explain the purpose of the interview or questionnaire to all participants
2.Keep your questions as simple as possible
3.Do not use jargon or specialist language
4.Phrase each question so that only one meaning is possible
5.Avoid vague, descriptive words such as ‘large’ and ‘small’
6. Avoid asking negative questions as these are easy to misinterpret
7.Only ask one question at a time
8. Include relevant questions only (do not be tempted to include every question you can think of.
9. Include questions which serve as cross-checks on the answers to other questions
10. Avoid questions which require the participant to perform calculations
11. Avoid leading or value-laden questions which imply what the required answer might be.
12. Avoid offensive questions or insensitive questions which could cause embarrassment
13.Avoid questions which are nothing more than a memory test
14.Keep your interview schedule or questionnaire as short as possible, but include all the questions required to cover your purposes

Question 17

General rules for designing-Questions

Answer 17

Some of the questions you will want to ask are likely to be factual, such as those which ask for the respondent’s age and occupation; others seek opinions.

Questions may be described as open-ended, where each respondent can give a personal response or opinion in his or her own words. Other questions can be described as closed, where the respondent’s answer is selected from a number of predetermined alternatives

Question 18

Open and Closed questionnaire

Answer 18

Open questions offer the advantage that the respondents are able to give their opinions as precisely as possible in their own words, but they can be difficult to analyse.
In a questionnaire survey, open questions may deter busy respondents from replying to the questionnaire.
Closed questions are very convenient for collecting factual data and are usually easy to analyse, since the range of potential answers is limited.
Thus, factual questions are likely to be closed questions, whereas questions which seek opinions are likely to be open-ended in a focus group or interview, for example, but closed in a questionnaire survey.

Question 19

Multiple Choice Answers

Answer 19

Multiple-choice answers are those where the participant is asked a closed question and selects his or her answer from a list of predetermined responses or categories.

As a general guide approximately six predetermined responses or categories is usually sufficient.
When deciding on categories, you must take care to use terms which mean something to the participants, so that you can have confidence in their replies.

Question 20

Scales (Likert Scale)

Answer 20

As well as answers to factual questions you will also be seeking opinions. One way to do this is to set a simple question requiring a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response.

It is often possible to allow participants to give more discriminating responses, and to state if they have no opinion, by providing them with some form of rating scale.

This allows a numerical value to be given to an opinion. One of the more frequently used types of scale is the Likert scale.

Likert scale. A likert scale is a measure scale consisting of a series of statements followed by four response alternatives, typically these: strongly agree, agree, disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree.

Question 21

Ranking

Answer 21

Another approach is to ask respondents to rank a list of items. Often respondents will not have gone through this type of exercise before and will be unwilling to do it just for your questionnaire.

After ranking the first three they may be unable to decide what their opinions are amongst the remainder and are likely to leave them blank.

If you wish to include a ranking question, keep the number of items as low as possible and definitely limit them to six.