 When doing any project it is important to know as

much information about the project and the views of

everyone involved with it so that the best direction for
the project can be made.

 Two ways of gathering important information is

through questionnaires and interviews. They both
have positive and negatives but overall get the job
done in different ways.
 Define goals and Objectives
 Determine Sampling group
 Create the Questionnaire or setup interview format
 Administer the questionnaire or perform interview
 Analyze the data
 The first step to doing research is to define your goals
and objectives.
 What Type of Data are you gathering?
 What Do You plan to do with the data?
 What are the areas that your willing to explore?
 Are there any arrangements you must make to carry
out your research?
 What Methods will you use in your research?
 Are your research process feasible?
 Random – Everyone has a equal chance of being selected.
 Systematic – Subjects are chosen in a specific order from a
population
 Stratified – Selecting the subjects based categories
 Cluster – Samples are found from natural groups in a
population
 Multi-Stage - Combining multiple sampling methods
 Convenience – no structure, surveying based on
opportunity
 Quota - selecting participants based on a specific
proportioned mutually-exclusive sub-groups of a
population.
 Purposive - A specific sample of the population is
targeted
 When selecting participants its important to select from
groups that are involved with the project and are
interested in it.
 It is also important to try to select from a variety of
different groups within the organization.
 Incentives – Gifts for participants to entice them the
complete the survey or participate in interview.
 The use of questionnaires is an indirect method of research
used to gather a wide-range of information from a large
population.
 Questionnaires are designed so that the participant must read
the questions that they are being asked and must then answer
them based on the response style.
 Contingency – A question that only applies to
people who responded in a certain way to another
question
 If yes complete this section if no, move to next section
 Matrix - A series of questions that’s share answer
choices
 Scaled - Responses are graded on a continuum
 How important do you think standardized test scores are
to a fifth grader’s
 Open Ended – Questions that the respondent can
write their own answer.
 Unstructured – Randomly Generated Questions
 What do you like to do on your spare time?
 Word Association – Participant chooses the first word that
comes to mind based on the list of words presented.
 Completion – Finish a story, sentence or picture that has
already been started.
 One of the hardest task to do on my job is _________.
 Closed Ended – Questions with a list of options to
choose from.
 Dichotomous – Questions with two possible responses (Yes
or No) or (True or False)
 Do you know your weight ?
 Multiple Choice – Questions with several options to choose
from
 Why don’t you use the school ‘s cafeteria services?
It’s too expensive
Severing times conflict with my class schedule
The location is inconvenient
The food quality is poor
 Objective data are questions that are not influenced by
personal preferences and beliefs.
 Are you an Geophysics major?

 Subjective data are questions that are heavily

influenced on personal preferences and beliefs.
 Do you like Sesimic Courses?
 Quantitative data is numerical based data that is counted then
analyzed

 Qualitative data is more precise data that contains words,

pictures or objects.

 In the majority of research, qualitative data is preferred and

has shown to provide more accurate answers than
quantitative data.
 Clarity – Try to make the questions as clear as possible and
not heavily based upon interpretation
 Wording of Questions – It is important to create questions
that will give you the most precise answer that you want
 Avoid similar responses choices
 Do not include questions that will provide data that isn’t
related to your goals & objective
 Add Open-Ended questions so that interested participants
can further express their opinions
 Personal Handout
 Email
 Mail
 Web survey
 Scanning – Fills in their selected choice based on
multiple options.
 Text Response – The participant creates their own
personal answer
 It is a cost and time efficient way of collecting a variety of
data from large populations
 Less pressure on the respondent to respond quickly or in a
certain way
 They are easy to analyze and record the data
 Sampling Error – The margin of error
 Response Bias – The respondents answer’s are not their true
beliefs
 Non-response Bias – Those who participate in a survey
answer differently that those who don’t.
 Wording of Question – Sometimes the question is
misunderstood because of wording.
 An interview is a direct method of research used to gather
information for a specific purpose.
 In interviews, the interviewer has the capability to learn
more about how participants feel about the questions based
on their body movements.
 The interviewer can also clarify any misinterpretations of
certain questions so that the answers will be more accurate.
 Structured – An organized interview with a specific list of
questions and no interruptions from the interviewer.
Cognitive – Involves a series of methods used to figure
out the process the participant goes through in a specific
situation.
 Unstructured – A free-flowing interview with little
organization and fewer questions.
 Personal – Interviewer and Interviewee are going
through interview face-to-face
 Telephone – Conducting an interview via telephone
 Web Interview – Interviewing with e-mail, chat room
or other form of communication over the web.
 Clarity – Speak clearly and properly so that the
participant can understand you.
 Have a set list of questions that you would like to ask
the participant and interact with them if necessary.
 Try to clock how long the interview will take so you
don’t go overboard and run out of time.
 Try not to offend or throw off the participant with your
questions and body motions.
 Responses are typically more detailed
 Interviewer can explain questions that are unclear
 Interviewer can observe the participants body
language
 The Interviewer can add additional questions if they
feel that the information will help their research.
 It can be difficult to get all the samples that you would
like to because of high cost and amount of time needed.
 Courtesy Bias – the tendency for respondents to give
answer that they think the interview wants to hear,
rather than what they really feel
 Faulty memory – some respondents may answer a
question incorrectly simply because of a poor memory
 When analyzing data it is important to note that your
data will typically never be precise especially in large
populations.
 There are statistical methods that can be use to get a
more accurate measure of the data.
 Analyzing based on percentages of answers is often a
common choice.
 Use the data to improve what is feasible in your
project.
 Designing Clinical Research, Stephen B. Hulley, et. al.
 www.statpac.com/surveys
 “Design and use of questionnaires: a review of best
practice applicable to surveys of health service staff
and patients”, Health Technology Assessment, 2001.
Vol.5, No. 31.
 Moser CA, Kalton G. Survey methods in social
investigation. 2nd ed. Aldershot: Gower; 1971.
 Questionnaire Design lecture, Theresa Scott