When using a questionnaire you must think about:

Objectivity – how objective are people's answers going to be? Will they just tell you what they think is the right or 'politically correct' answer?

Accuracy of measurement – will you be able to rely on the results? For example, people tend to under-estimate their weight and over-estimate their height, so measuring these directly will be more accurate than asking people.

Validity – are the questions measuring what you think they are? This can be quite hard to test but you need to be sure you are being properly understood and therefore that you are getting valid answers.

Reliability – do people answer in a consistent way every time or will they just answer without really thinking about it?

Resource availability – what resources have you got to collect the data?

Although all questionnaires tend to be based on written questions, the responses to these questions may be collected in several different ways, including the following:

Personal interview (closed questions). These tend to be used for opinion polls and street information collection.

Focused interview (open questions). These can gather in-depth information.

Telephone interview. Similar to the first two methods, but tend to be shorter and are conducted over the telephone.

Panel. A group of volunteers complete questionnaires before and after an event or intervention, to look for change.

Mail or postal survey. The questionnaire is sent through the post or emailed to people who may or may not have asked for them. The former are called 'solicited' questionnaires, and the latter 'unsolicited'. They can give a very poor response rate.

Group interview or discussion. An interviewer takes a group of people through a structured series of questions to find out about the range and depth of views and opinions.

Self-administered questionnaires. These are usually presented to the respondent by an interviewer or a person in an official capacity, who explains the purpose but does not actually administer the questionnaire.

Group-administered questionnaires. These are similar to self-administered questionnaires, but they are given to a whole group at the same time.

Decide the aims of the study and what you are trying to investigate (usually called the hypothesis or null hypothesis). E.g. men are more interested in sport than women.

Review the relevant literature, discuss with others and interested bodies. This also includes deciding how the data will be analysed and making sure that the data that are collected will be in a form that can be analysed.

Design the study. Making the hypotheses specific to the situation. E.g. men are more interested in playing golf than women.

Choose the research method and way of collecting the information that best meets the needs of your study.

Carry out a small test (usually called a pilot study) to make sure you have chosen the best and most suitable research method and modify it if the results show this is necessary.

Select a sample of subjects to be approached.

Collect your data (usually called doing the field work).

Put all of the results together and see what they are telling you. This is the part where the hypothesis is tested to see, for example, if men statistically do play more golf than women.

Write up the results, relating the findings to other research, drawing conclusions and interpretations.

Make sure your questionnaire:

•Gives clear instructions (e.g. on a scale 1-5 explain what each scale represents!)

•Is not too long

•Starts off with quick and easy-to-answer questions

•Is well-structured

•Contains the questions you need to give you relevant results

•Is piloted

You should take care to ensure that:

•The respondent is motivated to respond. What will they get in return?

•The respondent has the particular knowledge required. There is no point asking people questions about how they feel about products that they do not use, for example.

•The questionnaire takes into account the respondent's limitations and personal frames of reference, so they will easily understand the meaning and aims of the questions.

•There is no point asking people who have never been abroad about their attitudes to food in foreign countries.

•The respondent has produced an adequate answer.

• Know specifically what is going to be asked.

• Think of how you ask for the information you need, without leading the person to a particular answer, or putting them off.

 

Broadly speaking, all questions are either 'closed' or 'open'.

A closed question is one in which the respondent is offered a choice of alternative replies.

Open questions give more opportunities for full answers but respondents may be reluctant to spend time filling them in, so closed questions or multiple-choice boxes may actually bring out more information.

Open or 'free answer' questions are not followed by any kind of choice, and the answers have to be recorded in full. In the case of a written questionnaire, the amount of space or the number of lines provided for the answer will help to determine the length and fullness of the responses you expect to get. But remember that open questions are often easy to ask, difficult to answer and still more difficult to analyse.

The advantages of closed questions are:

•They clarify the alternatives for the respondent and avoid snap responses being given.

•They reduce coding errors and time in analysis.

•They eliminate the useless answer.

The disadvantages are:

•It is difficult to make the alternatives mutually exclusive, that is, all separate from each other with no overlap. They must cover the total response range. (This presupposes that you will have a good idea of what you are likely to get, showing the importance of pilot studies).

• They create a forced choice situation which rules out marginal or unexpected answers.

• All the alternatives must seem equally logical or attractive.

• In complex or difficult questions, respondents may dive for safety and the ease of the 'don't know' alternative.

You must consider the following points when deciding the actual words to use in a question:

1. Is the question specific?Often a common error is to ask a general question when an answer on a specific issue is wanted. The question, 'Are you satisfied with your canteen?' is unsatisfactory if you are interested in meal prices or the quality of the service.

2. Is the language easily understood by all?Do not use technical words or words which have a different meaning for some people.

3. Is the meaning of the question clear?

• It is important that the question is short.

• This ensures that questionnaire designers are clear in their thinking and remove surplus words.

• It ensures that the respondent is not overloaded with too much information and it reduces the chance of the respondent forgetting the earlier parts of the question.

• Double negatives and complex questions can lead to error as can the use of the words 'generally', 'normally' or 'frequently'.

• Avoid double-barrelled questions such as 'Do you suffer from headaches or stomach pains?'.

4. Does the question give the respondent a lead to the answer?

• Clearly, leading questions must be avoided.

• Obvious examples are 'Do you agree that the policies of the present Government are unfair?' (which invites the answer 'yes').

• More insidious are examples that use certain loaded words such as 'British', 'student' and the like, where the respondent is reacting to the word and not to the question.

• It is also necessary to be aware of questions which lead because of the nature of the questionnaire.

• An example is the question 'How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?' which may be innocuous in a questionnaire about household expenditure, but may produce different results in a questionnaire concerned with medical matters.

5. Will the question lead to prestige-biased answers?

• Many factual questions are loaded with prestige. • Some people will claim they take a bath or shower more frequently than is

strictly true. • People may claim to watch documentaries on the TV when in fact they are

watching 'soaps'. • People deny reading Sunday newspapers of dubious repute and claim to read

more of the prestige papers than are actually sold! • Some people would seem to brush their teeth with great frequency and to

visit museums almost every week! • There is no simple answer to this problem. • In addition to being aware that it exists, there are two general measures that

may help. • Firstly, to use filter questions, or to word the main question in such a way that

a low prestige answer is equally possible. • Therefore, instead of 'Have you read one of the following magazines within

the last seven days?', you could say 'Have you had time to read any magazines at all within the past seven days?'.

6. Is the question hypothetical?

These are 'What would you do if…?' type of questions. Generally these do not yield reliable results.

Ensure your results are:

•clear

•easy to read

•are shown with Titles

•displayed in the appropriate graph

•are effectively displayed

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