Questionnaire development

Question 1

What is important to consider when writing your questions?

Answer 1

• Be specific as you can with the wording
• If a timescale is relevant, be specific
• Avoid double negative questions
• Avoid double barrelled questions (two issues)
• Don’t induce a particular response
• Be ethical

Question 2

What are the two types of responses?

Answer 2

Open and closed

Question 3

What is an open question?

Answer 3

• Allows for an unconstrained response
• Gives rich detail about the topic
• However more difficult to summarise

Question 4

What is a closed question?

Answer 4

• Requires a choice from a predetermined option

- Easy to code and summarise options

Question 5

Why would you want to create a questionnaire?

Answer 5

• There is no existing measure

- Or an existing measure is flawed

Question 6

Advantages of open questions

Answer 6

 Respondent is not forced to choose between options
 Respondent can give explanations for responses
 Respondent can give additional information they feel is relevant or important to their response

Question 7

Disadvantages of closed questions

Answer 7

 Respondent can give additional information they feel is relevant or important to their response
 BUT: What if that information is not relevant to the survey?
 More time consuming for respondent
 Analysis is more complex and time consuming for you

Question 8

Types of closed questions?

Answer 8

• Categorical (male vs female)
• Likert scale
• Ranking (rank from favourite to least favourite)

Question 9

What should be considered about categorical responses?

Answer 9

• Need to be mutually exclusive (e.g. answers should not cross over)
• If there are multiple answers, need to be clear on how many to select
• Think about if you need a ‘other’ - how would you analyse this?

Question 10

What is an item?

Answer 10

-asking the responder the extent to which they agree with a statement
 I like to have a lot of people around me
 Response: “strongly disagree” through to “strongly agree”

Question 11

What is a question?

Answer 11

Asking a more explicit question

 Do you like to have a lot of people around you?  Response: “not at all” through to “very much”

Question 12

What should be considered with likert scales?

Answer 12

• Usually 5 responses but can be more or less
• Can include a neutral but needs to be in the middle
• Can start at 0 or 1 but needs to be consistent
• Do no show the numbers

Question 13

How can you avoid random responses?

Answer 13

-Acquiescence bias (always agreeing with items)
 Ensure the questionnaire is not too long
 Positive and negatively marked items

Question 14

What should be considered with positive and negative scoring?

Answer 14

• Only show participants the words
• Have an equal amount of positive and negative
• Randomise the order of the positive and negative responses

Question 15

What is a visual analogue scale?

Answer 15

• Lines are typically 100mm
• Provides scores 0-100
• More fine measure, parametric and less prone to responder bias
• Can be positive or negative

Question 16

How should a questionnaire be ordered?

Answer 16

• Put demographics at the beginning or end
• Most important first
• Don’t start with sensitive items
• Go from general to particular
• Factual to abstract
• Closed to open

Question 17

Why does a questionnaire need to be valid?

Answer 17

To ensure that it’s measuring what you set out to measure

Question 18

Why does a questionnaire need to be reliable?

Answer 18

To provide a consistent measure

Question 19

Why would you use subscales?

Answer 19

If there is a large number of questions, you can group them into themes

Question 20

How can you measure validity and reliability?

Answer 20

Cronbach’s alpha