Dear Students,

Here are some useful tips about the developments of instruments of data collection, which I am
expecting you to strictly consider.

1. Make sure that relevant instruments are developed for the chosen methods of data
collection. If your method is survey, you need to develop survey questionnaire. If your
method is interview or focus group discussion (FGD), you need to have interview or FGD
guide. If your method is observation, you need to have observation checklist. You may
also use combinations of some of these methods.
2. Make sure that the questions you shall construct are relevant and adequate to deal
with each research question. To this effect, you are advised to use your research
questions as themes; and put the questions you suggest under the research questions.
i) Questions related to RQ1 (write the question or rephrase it).
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ii) Questions related to RQ2 (write the question or rephrase it).
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iii) Questions related to RQ3 (write the question or rephrase it).
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3. If you are using a questionnaire, make sure that it contains the following details:
 Headings (St. Mary’s University, School of Graduate Studies, General MBA);
 By whom it would be filled in (a questionnaire to be filled by----);
 Introduction (the topic, and purpose of the research, confidentiality issue, etc);
 Directions as to how the questionnaire is filled in by the respondents (both
general and specific);
 Demographic/ personal characteristics of the respondents (age, sex, etc);
 Questions related to the research questions as suggested above (in number 2).
4. Try to put your questions as clear as possible to your respondents and avoid ambiguous
questions. Moreover, take care of your wording; and don’t use terms that may irritate
your respondents. If you are distributing the Amharic version of the questionnaire, you
should also send me the translated version.
5. Try to use standardized instrument (scale). E.g. you may use a Likert-scale question.
6. Try to limit the number of dichotomy (yes/no) questions in your questionnaire.
7. Try not to use multiple response questions. If you use it, please let the respondents
aware that they could choose more than one times. However, instead of multiple
response questions, I suggest you to use ranking type of questions. In this case, you are
putting the possible options/lists under the question and asking the respondents to put
them in their ranking order.
8. Try to avoid leading (questions that may have hints about the anticipated answer) and
double-barreled questions (questions asking two issues at a time).
9. The formatting aspect should be duly taken into account. It’s lay out should be
appealing to the readers (respondents).
10. As much as possible you should be able to MAKE THE PRE-TEST of your instruments,

particularly for a survey questionnaire.