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FORMATTING THE QUESTIONNAIRE
As the questions are determined, a series of decisions must be made about the
questionnaire format: its appearance, length, and order of questions. The questionnaire must be pleasing to look at and easy to complete.
The following guidelines may help in formatting the questionnaire.
Begin with an introduction which includes the questionnaire’s purpose, who is conducting it, to what use the information will go, and confidentiality. In mailed questionnaires, reinforce points that were made in the cover letter.
Make the first questions interesting. Make them clearly related and useful to the topic of the questionnaire. The beginning questions should not be open-ended or questions with a long list of answer choices.
Put the more important questions at the beginning.
FORMATTING THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Arrange the order of questions to achieve continuity and a natural flow. Try to keep all questions on one subject together. Put the more general questions first, followed by a more specific question. For example, if you want to find out about a person’s knowledge of insurance, start with questions about types of insurance, purpose of the different types, followed by questions about costs of these various types.
Try to use the same type of question/responses throughout a particular train of thought. It breaks the attention span to have a multiple choice question following a YES/NO question, then an open-ended question.
Place demographic questions (age, gender, race/ethnicity, etc.) in the beginning of the questionnaire.
Use quality print in an easy-to-read type face. Allow sufficient open space to let the respondent feel it is not crowded and hard to read.
FORMATTING THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Keep the whole question and its answers on the same page. Don’t cause respondents to turn a page in the middle of a question or between the question and its answers.
Be sure that the question is distinguishable from the instructions and the answers. May be put the instructions in boldface or italics.
Try to arrange questions and answers in a vertical flow. This way, the respondent moves easily down the page, instead of side to side.
Give directions on how to answer. Specific instructions may include: (Circle the number of your choice.) (Circle only one.) (Check all that apply.) (Please fill in the blank.) (Enter whole numbers.) (Please do not use decimals or fractions.)
Advantages of the Questionnaires
The main advantage of using questionnaires is that a large number of people can be reached relatively easily and economically. A standard questionnaire provides quantifiable answers for a research topic. These answers are relatively easy to analyze. Questionnaires can be designed to target a certain “audience even if they are geographically spread.” Depending on the design of questionnaires, the data collected may be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative data is in numerical form and can be used to find answers about a particular problem such as: customers’ perceptions about certain products, feelings about services being offered by “Call Centers”, and so on.
Another good thing about questionnaires is that they “reduce bias”.
Effective questionnaires may be designed in such a way that the questions are “short and focused” and have at least less than “12 words”
Disadvantages of The Questionnaires
Questionnaires are not always the best way to gather information. For example, if there is little previous information on a problem, a questionnaire may only provide limited additional insight. On one hand, the investigators may not have asked the right questions which allow new insight in the research topic. On the other hand, questions often only allow a limited choice of responses. If the right response is not among the choice of answers, the investigators will obtain little or no valid information.
Another setback of questionnaires is the varying responses to questions. Respondents sometimes misunderstand or misinterpret questions. If this is the case, it will be very hard to correct these mistakes and collect missing data in a second round.