CHAPTER 11

1. Key decisions ins questionnaire design

2. Choosing between open-ended and fixed-alternative questions
3. Avoid common mistakes in writing questionnaire items
4. Minimized problems with order bias
5. Understand principles of survey flow
6. Use latest survey technology to reduce respondent error

Considerations in Questionnaire Design

1. What should be asked?

2. How should questions be phrased?
3. In what sequence should the questions be arranged?
4. What questionnaire layout will best serve the research objectives?
5. How can the questionnaire encourage complete responses?
6. How should the questionnaire be presented and revised?

Choosing between open-ended and fixed-alternative questions

Open-ended response questions: questions that pose a problem and ask

respondents to answer in their own words.

Advantages

 Beneficial when researchers are doing exploratory research.

 Free-answers allow the researcher to understand what respondents
spontaneous reactions are about brands or items
 Valuable at the beginning of an interview.

Disadvantages

 High administrative costs

 High possibility of interviwer bias

Fixed-alternative questions: Questions in which respondents are given specific,

limited-alternative responses and asked to choose the one closest to their viewpoint.

Types of fixed-alternative questions (FAQs)

Simple-dichotomy questions: an FAQ that requires the respondent to choose one of
two alternatives

Multiple choice questions: an FAQ that requires the respondent to choose one
response from among multiple alternatives.

Frequency determination question: A FAQ that ass for an answer about general
frequency of occurrence (e.g how much time do you spend on social media
weekly?).

Checklist question: FAQ that allows the respondent to provide multiple answers to a
single question by checking off items.

Avoid common mistakes in writing questionnaire items

 Simpler is better – questions should be readily understandable to all

respondents.
 Avoid Leading and Loaded Questions – leading questions (implying certain
answers) lead to bias. Loaded questions suggests a socially desirable answer
or is emotionally charged.
 Avoid ambiguity - Be as specific as possible
 Avoid Double-barrelled Items – a double-barrelled question is a question that
may induce bias because it covers 2+ issues at once.
 Avoid making assumptions
 Avoid taxing respondents’ memory (e.g. “do you remember any commercial
on that program?”). Unaided recall = asking respondents to remember
something without providing a clue. Aided recall = asking respondents to
remember something and giving them a clue to help

Minimized problems with order bias

Order bias results when a particular sequencing of questions affects the way a
person responds or when the choices provided as answers favors one response
over another.

Funnel Technique
One way to minimize this? Using the funnel technique, this technique asks general
questions before specific question in order to obtain unbiased responses.

Randomized presentations

Another way to avoid bias is by asking questions in a randomised manner. Bias is

cause by close order of alternative questions.

Random Response Techniques

Involve randomly assigning respondents to answer either the question of interest

(sexual behaviours, pornography, consumptions) or a mundane and unembarrassing
question.

Understand principles of survey flow

Survey Flow – ordering of questions through a survey

Sometimes questions do not relate to certain respondents and require them to stop
the questionnaire or even a survey breakoff (they stop and answers to the survey are
incomplete).

Asking a filter question can serve as a branching mechanism directing respondents

to an appropriate part of the questionnaire.

Multiple-gird (matrix table) question

Several similar questions of the same format all arranged in a grid format.

Use latest survey technology to reduce respondent error

Response Quality. Once a respondent agrees to participate, they have an ethical

obligation to complete the task in a responsible fashion. This doesn’t always happen
though.

 Timing

Survey software provides easy mechanisms for timing respondents as they move
through a survey. The presumption is that individuals that move through an interview
faster than the average respondent cant be reliable responses.
Timing questions record how fast the respondent clicked on the questionnaire and
how quickly it took before the respondent clicked for certain answers on the survey.

 Randomised assignment

At times the researcher needs to assign a certain set of items to specific

respondents. Software facilitates this assignment.

 Physical Features

Physical features that can influence responses:

 Tracking interest – using a heat map question which tracks the part of an
image that most captures respondents attention.
 Status bar- Internet questionnaire, a visual indicator that tells the respondent
what portion