Monday, January 31, 2011

Questionnaire Design: introduction & Chapter 1

Introduction
-          Obtaining the best answers
-          Data we collect rarely completely accurate
o   Ask to recall events that are often trivial, such as breakfast cereals they bought
o   Analyse and report their emotions and feelings about issues they have never consciously considered, such as feelings about different brands of paint.
o   Even if they can recognise their feelings, can they articulate them.
o   Our own instruments are often blunt and rarely capable of assessing what is true & accurate.
-          Why do we need a questionnaire
-          Questionnaire – medium of remote conversation between researcher and respondent.
-          Remoteness
o   Lack of interaction

Objectives in writing a questionnaire

-          Questionnaires  in the survey process
o   Bra example
-          Stakeholders in the questionnaire
-          Objectives of the study
-          Relating research objectives to business objectives
-          Relating the questionnaire to the research objectives
o   Eg paired comparison à will require questions to compare preference between products
-          Recruitment questionnaires
-          Collecting unbiased and accurate data
o   Problems within questionnaire
§  Ambiguity
§  Order effect between questions
§  Order effect within questions
§  Inadequate response codes
·         Do you like pizza : yes / no
o   Respondent may wish to qualify answer : homemade or purchased.
·         How often do you visit cinema
§  More than once a week
§  Once a week
§  Once a month
§  Once every three months
o   What about respondent who went twice last week, and not at all in the three prior months.
§  Wrong question asked due to poor routing
o   Problems with interview
§  Questions asked inaccurately by interviewer
·         Ie paraphrase
·         Poorly written, eg too many sub clauses
§  Misunderstanding
·         vocab
§  Inaccurate record
·         Précis to keep conversation flowing
§  Boredom / fatigue
·         Lots of rating questions
o   Pattern of responses that bears no/little relationship to their actual answers
·         On-line drop out p18
§  Inaccuracy of memory
·         Diary
·         Minority behaviour tends to be unreported
·         Time / telescoping
§  Asking respondents to describe attitudes on subjects which they hold no conscious attitude
·         Studies have shown data reported are more stable where respondents are not given time to think about their attitudes
§  Lying
§  Impress


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