SDA: Questionnaire Design

Question 1

What are the two main types of survey?

Answer 1

1. Self-administered

2. Interview-administered

Question 2

How can self-administered surveys be delivered?

Answer 2

1. Post
2. Drop and Collect distribution
3. Online

Question 3

What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-administered surveys?

Answer 3

Advantages:

1. Cheaper than telephone/personal interviews
2. Quicker
3. No interviewer influence

Disadvantages:

1. Attention must be paid to question style/layout - time-consuming
2. Respondents can read whole questionnaire before responding
3. Don’t know who answered it
4. Poor response rate

Question 4

How can interview-administered surveys be delivered?

Answer 4

1. Face-to-face structured interviews
2. Same as above but a list of possible responses may be shown to participant
3. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews
4. Telephone

Question 5

What are the advantages and disadvantages of interview administered surveys?

Answer 5

Advantages:

1. In-depth
2. Telephone: effects of personal and social characteristics aren’t produced

Disadvantages:

1. Interviewer influence
2. Time-consuming
3. Telephone - can’t use visual aids

Question 6

What things should be considered when designing a questionnaire?

Answer 6

1. Maintain appropriate focus
2. Straight forward/easy to understand (concept clarity)
3. Piloting - several edits may be needed
4. Clear and neat presentation
5. Filtering and ‘skip patterns’ clearly thought out
6. Appropriate length
7. Cost, time and resources
8. As much detail as possible

Question 7

What are the two main types of questions?

Answer 7

Open questions

Closed questions

Question 8

What are open questions?

Answer 8

Free responses
No pre-defined answers
Shouldn’t be used frequently in quantitative research

Question 9

What are closed questions?

Answer 9

Range of responses to select
Quick and easy
Lacks depth if brief

Question 10

How can response rates to questionnaires be maximised?

Answer 10

1. Keep questionnaire short
2. Keep it well laid out
3. Make it easy to use
4. Provide an incentive

Question 11

Examples of closed question types

Answer 11

'Yes' or 'No'
Category
Checklists
Spectrum e.g. on a scale of 1-10
Grid/Table

Question 12

After piloting a questionnaire or interview, what things should be considered?

Answer 12

1. Were any questions too personal and therefore made respondents uncomfortable?
2. Were any questions asked >1 time because they were complicated?
3. Were any questions misunderstood?
4. Difficult to read?
5. Did it take too long to administer?
6. Were there sections where respondents wanted to give lengthier answers but couldn’t?

Question 13

What is the average response rate for a postal questionnaire?

Answer 13

40%