Questionnaire Design & Scale Development

Types of information
- Basic information: relates to the research problem.
- Classification information: consists of socio-economic and demographic characteristics.
- Identification information: includes name, address and telephone numbers.

Un-structured questionnaire
- Referred to a free-response questions.
- Useful in exploratory research.
- Help the researcher interpret responses, identifying, analyzing new scales of attitudes or options of
respondents because of unbiased questions.
Structured questionnaire
- Specifying set of responses as well as their format.
- Alternatives tend to be un biased
- Easy for respondents to answer, easy for researcher to analyze.
- Difficult to develop effective multiple-choice options.

Definition of Questionnaire
Self-administrated questionnaire (SAQ) is pre-formulated, written set of questions to which the respondent
record his answers.

Objectivity
- Translate the researcher’s information needs into a set of specific questions that respondents are
willing and able to answer.
- May be used to measure the variables of interest before and or after exposure to the experimental
treatment.
- May by designated to record respondent reaction to new products, advertising, packaging, or some
other marketing stimuli.

Specifications
- One of the most popular methods of conducting research.
- Provide a convenient way to gathering information from a target population.
- Cost-effective and easy way to construct and analyze.
- Self-reported form designed to elicit information though written or verbal responses of the subjects.
- Research instrument used for data collection.
- Viewed as multi-stage process beginning with definition of the aspects to be examined and ending with
interpretation of the results.

Types of questionnaire
- Open ended questionnaire: type of unstructured questionnaires, are those questions which provide
opportunity to the respondents to express their opinions and answers in their own way. It gives
unbiased point of view and additional insights.

- Closed ended questionnaire: type of structured questionnaires, these questions offer respondents a
number of alternative replies, from which must choose the one that must likely matches the appropriate
answer. Helps respondents to make quick decisions. Facilitate efficient tracking of opinion.

- Dichotomous questionnaire: type of structured questionnaire, these requires the respondent to make
a choice between two responses such as yes/no or male/female.
 - Multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ): type of structured questionnaires, these questions require
respondents to make a choice between more than two response alternatives.

- Cafeteria questionnaire: type of structured questionnaires, special type of MCQ’s that ask the
respondents to select a response that most closely corresponds to their view.

- Rank questionnaire: type of structured questionnaires, these questions ask respondents to rank their
responses from most favorable to least favorable.

- Contingency questionnaire: type of structured questionnaires, a question asked further only if the
respondents gives a particular response to previous question.

- Rating questionnaire: type of structured questionnaires, these questions ask respondents to judge
something along an ordered dimensions. Respondent is asked to rate a particular issue on a scale that
ranges from poor to good.

- Importance questionnaire: respondents are asked to rate the importance of particular issue, on a
rating scale, this helps to know that the things/issues that are important to a respondent.

- Likert questionnaire: help to know how strongly the respondents agree with a particular statement.
These questions helps to assess how respondent feels towards a certain issue/service.

- Bipolar questionnaire: questions that have two extreme answers. Respondent have to choose between
two opposite ends of the scale.

- Matrix questionnaire: it includes multiple questions and identical response categories are assigned.

- Advantages
In-Expensive Comparability
Practical No pressure
Cheapest Convenient
Scalability Easy analysis
Validity & Reliability Anonymous
- Dis-advantages
Non-response No way of knowing right person to complete the
questionnaire.
Bias in answer categories (lack of validity) Ethical issues
Time-consuming Internet access required (technology required)

Steps Required to Design & Administer a Questionnaire

1. Defining the objective of questionnaire
o Questionnaire that is written without a clear goal and purpose is inevitably going to overlook
important issues and waste participants’ time by asking useless questions. The questionnaire
may look a logical flow and thereby cause the participant to lose interest.

2. Writing a questionnaire
o Clarity of questionnaire.
o Quantify choices.
o Avoid leading questions.
o Phrasing must be considered.
o Embarrassing questions gain trust.
o Hypothetical questions must avoided.
o Prestige bias, how respondent lie but not directly; especially political questions.
 o Keep questionnaire short, because of lengthy questionnaires lead t boredom among
respondents.
o Avoid asking questions about past events.
o Questions outside the respondent experience should not asked.
o Avoid questions with difficult concept, which are not easily understandable for respondents.
o Use familiar, natural language.
o Cross check the respondents by asking about the same information in two different ways.
o Determine the order of questions.

3. Determining the sampling group

o Decide a participant group.

4. Administrating the questionnaire

o Postal
i. Low cost
ii. Not labor intensive
iii. Anonymity

o Phone
i. High speed
ii. Rapport with respondents
iii. Detailed questions
iv. High response rate

o Electronic
i. Low cost
ii. High speed
iii. Anonymity
iv. Not labor intensive
v. Detailed questions
vi. High response rate

5. Interpretation of results

Scale Definitions
Are a measurement instruments that are collection of items (questions/statements) intended to reveal
theoretical variables not readily observable by direct means.

Likert Questionnaire Scale

- Definition
Is a psychometric, subjective scale commonly involved in research that employs questioners. It is the most
widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such as that the term is often used
interchangeably with rating scale.

- Specifications
Use a universal method of collecting data, which mean it is easy to understand them. Working with
questionnaire data, it is easy to draw conclusions, reports, results and graphs from the responses. Allow
surveyors to quantify the intensity of respondents’s responses.
 - Usage
o To measure respondents’s attitudes by asking the extent to which they agree or disagree with
particular question or statement.
o To use likert scale in a survey you present participants with likert-type questions or statements,
and a continuum of items, usually with 5 or 7 possible responses, to capture their degree of
agreement.
o Seven-point scales: agreement, frequency, appropriateness, satisfactions, reflective of me,
level of difficulty, priority, quality and importance.
o A commonly used five-point likert scale example to measure satisfaction (is very satisfied,
satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, dissatisfied and very dissatisfied).

Pre-Testing Questionnaire
- Definitions
Pre-testing refers to testing the questionnaire on small sample. To identify and eliminate potential problems.

- Modality
1. Test the questionnaire on small sample, varying from 15 to 30 respondents for the initial testing.
2. Test all aspects of the questionnaire, including question content, wording, sequence, form and
layout, questions difficulty, and instructions.
3. Begin the pre-test using personal interviewers.
4. Conduct the pre-test by mail, telephone, or electronically.
5. Use variety of interviewers for pre-tests.
6. In this stage, any potential problem in the interviewing method will be revealed.
7. Code and analyze the responses obtained from the pre-test.
8. Based on feedback from the pre-test, the questionnaire should be edited, and the identified
problems corrected.