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Questionnaire Design

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Title: Questionnaire Design


1
Questionnaire Design
2
It is not every question that deserves an
answer.
  • Publius Syrus(Roman, 1st century B.C.)

3
Ask a Sensitive Question, Get a Sensitive Answer
  • Survey researchers believe that the responses
    that people give are valid.
  • Care must be taken with sensitive questions.
  • Researchers must take care in asking relevant
    questions in ways that produce the most truthful
    results.

4
Basic Considerations in Questionnaire Design
  • Questionnaire design is one of the most critical
    stages in the survey research process.
  • A questionnaire (survey) is only as good as the
    questions it asks ask a bad question, get bad
    results.
  • The questions must meet the basic criteria of
    relevance and accuracy.

5
What Should Be Asked?
  • Questionnaire Relevancy
  • All information collected should address a
    research question that helps the decision maker
    in solving a current marketing problem.
  • Questionnaire Accuracy
  • The information is valid it faithfully
    represents reality.
  • Questionnaires should use simple, understandable,
    unbiased, unambiguous, nonirritating words.
  • Questionnaire design should facilitate recall
    motivate respondents to cooperate.
  • Proper question wording sequencing to avoid
    confusion biased answers.

6
Major Decisions in Questionnaire Design
  • What should be asked?
  • How should each question be phrased?
  • In what sequence should the questions be
    arranged?
  • What questionnaire layout will best serve the
    research objectives?
  • How should the questionnaire be pretested? Does
    the questionnaire need to be revised?

7
Phrasing Questions
  • Open-ended questions
  • Aka essay questions, short-answer questions
  • Fixed-alternative questions
  • Aka closed or closed-ended questions

8
Open-Ended Response Questions
  • Pose some problem ask respondents to answer in
    their own words.
  • Advantages
  • Particularly beneficial in exploratory research,
    especially when the range of responses is not
    known.
  • Identify which words phrases people
    spontaneously give.
  • Valuable at the beginning of an interview.
  • Disadvantages
  • High cost of administering open-ended response
    questions.
  • The possibility that interviewer bias will
    influence the answer.
  • Bias introduced by articulate individuals longer
    answers.

9
Example of Open-Ended Response Question
10
Fixed-alternative Questions
  • Questions in which respondents are given
    specific, limited-alternative responses asked
    to choose the one closest to their own viewpoint.
  • Advantages
  • Require less interviewer skill
  • Take less time to answer
  • Are easier for the respondent to answer
  • Provides comparability of answers
  • Disadvantages
  • Researcher may be unaware of all potential
    responses
  • Tendency of respondents to choose more
    prestigious or socially acceptable alternative

11
Example of a Fixed-Alternative Question
12
Types of Fixed-Alternative Questions
  • Simple-dichotomy (dichotomous) Question
  • Requires the respondent to choose one of two
    alternatives (e.g., yes or no).
  • Example
  • Did you make any calls with your home (landline)
    phone during the 7 days?
  • _____ Yes _____ No
  • Determinant-Choice (multiple-choice) Question
  • Requires the respondent to choose one response
    from among multiple alternatives (e.g., A, B, or
    C).
  • Example

13
Types of Fixed-Alternative Questions (cont.)
  • Frequency-determination Question
  • Asks for an answer about general frequency of
    occurrence (e.g., often, occasionally, or never).
  • Checklist Question
  • Allows the respondent to provide multiple answers
    to a single question by checking off items.
  • Scale
  • Likert, Semantic Differential, Stapel, etc.

14
Phrasing Questions for Self-Administered,Telephon
e, Personal Interview Surveys
  • Influences on Question Phrasing
  • Means of data collection telephone interview,
    personal interview, self-administered
    questionnaire will influence question format
    question phrasing.
  • Questions for mail, Internet, telephone surveys
    must be less complex than those used in personal
    interviews.
  • Questionnaires for telephone personal
    interviews should be written in a conversational
    style.

15
Best Question Formats Vary by the Interview
Medium
16
Guidelines For Avoiding Mistakes
  • Simpler is better
  • Avoid leading loaded questions
  • Leading question directs respondents to an
    answer you want them to give
  • Loaded question suggests a socially desirable
    answer or is emotionally charged.

17
Guidelines For Avoiding Mistakes (cont.)
  • Avoid ambiguity Be as specific as possible
  • Probably /Definitely Sometimes/Always, etc.
  • Avoid double-barreled items
  • Double-barreled question may induce bias
    because it covers two or more issues at once.
  • Do you think the President is responsible for the
    federal government shut-down and the currently
    rising gasoline prices? Yes No
  • Avoid making assumptions
  • Given Macys skill-level at gift wrapping, .
  • All-inclusive response alternatives
  • Avoid taxing respondents memory

18
Avoid Common Wording Mistakes in Questionnaire
Design
19
Order Bias
  • Question Sequence
  • Order bias
  • Bias caused by the influence of earlier questions
    in a questionnaire or by an answers position in
    a set of answers.
  • Funnel technique
  • Asking general questions before specific
    questions in order to obtain unbiased responses.
  • Randomized Presentations
  • Used in electronic questionnaires, but rarely
    used in printed questionnaires due to coding
    difficulties.
  • Randomized Response Techniques
  • Randomly assigning respondents to answer either
    the question of interest (embarrassing) or a
    mundane unembarrassing question.

20
Survey Flow
  • Survey flow
  • The ordering of questions through a survey.
  • Breakoff
  • A respondent who stops answering questions before
    reaching the end of the survey.
  • Filter question
  • A question that screens out respondents who are
    not qualified to answer a second (or follow-up)
    question.
  • Branching
  • Directing respondents to alternative portions of
    the questionnaire based on their response to a
    filter question.

21
Survey Flow for Eurocar Tour de France
Sponsorship
22
Telephone Questionnaire with Skip Questions
23
Survey Technology
  • Physical Features
  • Heat map question
  • A graphical question that tracks the parts of an
    image or advertisement that most capture a
    respondents attention.
  • Status Bar
  • A visual indicator that tells the respondent what
    portion of the survey he or she has completed.
  • Prompting
  • Informs the respondent that he or she has skipped
    an item or provided implausible information.
  • Piping Software
  • Allows question answers to be inserted into later
    questions.

24
Tracking Points of Interest Using a Heat Map
25
Illustration of Status Bar Prompts
26
Pretesting Revising Questionnaires
  • Pretesting Process
  • Seeks to determine whether respondents have any
    difficulty understanding the questionnaire
  • whether there are any ambiguous or biased
    questions.
  • Preliminary Tabulation
  • A tabulation of results of a pretest to help
    determine whether questionnaire will meet the
    objectives of the research.

27
I Give Up!
  • Large portion of respondents give up before
    finishing abandon the survey (break-offs).
  • Guidelines
  • Visually appealing easy to read
  • Fewer questions per page (no more than 20)
  • 4 pages maximum for consumers
  • 6 pages maximum for business leaders
  • Question order (funnel vs. reverse-funnel)
  • Sensitive questions open-ended questions
    encourage break-offs /or item non-response
  • Sophisticated samples increase response rate
  • Make information requests legitimate
  • Pretesting is important (pretest EVERYTHING)

28
Questionnaire Reproduction(if mail survey)
  • Professional appearance
  • Booklet format for long questionnaires
  • Place directions as close to questions as
    possible
  • Expect reproduction errors
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