How to design an effective Research questionnaire

Designing a survey instrument commonly known as questionnaire is a process which needs a lot of attention to detail. A questionnaire is a medium of communication between the researcher and the respondent, which is administered on the researcher’s behalf by an interviewer.

In the questionnaire, the researcher defines the questions to which he or she wants to know the answers and, through the questionnaire, the respondents’ answers are conveyed back to the researcher. The questionnaire therefore, can be described as the medium of conversation between two people, which in this case is the researcher and therespondent.

A structured interview is one in which each subject or respondent is asked a series of questions according to a prepared and fixed interviewing schedule – the questionnaire.

In all cases the role of the questionnaire is to provide a standardized interview across all respondents. This is so that all respondents are asked the questions that are appropriate to them, and so that, when those questions are asked, they are always asked in exactly the same manner to maintain uniformity.

Having defined what a questionnaire is and its resultant role in the survey process. We can now safely look at the key issues that need to be addressed before a questionnaire can be designed. It is important that you understand the reason why the survey is being commissioned in the first place. You need to understand the research and business objectives of the survey, and how the data for the survey is going to be collected.

Once you understand the definition of the research universe, the data collection medium and the survey design, the questions can now be drafted. It is important to follow these steps in planning:

©     Define the principal information that is required.

©     Determine what else is required for analysis purposes.

©     Map the flow of the subject areas or sub-sections within the questionnaire.

Defining the information required

It should be clear from the research objectives and the business objectives what information areas the questionnaire needs to cover. This is the principal information such as product and brand awareness and usage, behavioral patterns, attitudes, satisfaction with service, response to concept or test product, etc. The level of detail to which it is required should also be apparent from the research and business Objectives.

Other information required

It may not always be obvious from the research objectives what additional information is required for analysis purposes. This may include demographic or classification data, but could be far broader than that. In an attitudinal study, for example, it could include brand and product usage and brand loyalty so that attitudes can be cross analyzed by products used and weight of usage. It is important to know how the data are to be analysed at the initiation stage. If the appropriate data are not collected, the analysis cannot be carried out.

Sequencing of the questionnaire sections

The questionnaire can be properly planned once the main objectives and analysis information requirements have been decided. It is most commonly divided into three sections:

Exclusion

A common, although not universal, practice is to exclude respondents from research surveys who work     in market research, marketing or the client’s industry.

Screening questions

Following the exclusion question, the next part of the questionnaire will be to screen the respondents for eligibility for the survey, depending on whether or not they belong to the research population.

Main questionnaire

As a rule, it is better to work from the most general topics through to the most specific. Thus, the interview might start with questions about the respondent’s behaviour in the market in general, before proceeding through to specific questions about the client’s product and then to reaction to a new proposition for the client’s product.

There are two reasons for this. First, if the questions regarding the specific product or brand of interest were asked first, then the respondents would be aware of the question writer’s interest and this would bias their answers to the more general market questions that come later.

I will complete this article in my next post. Please feel free to make contributions in the form of comments or questions.

To your success!!!