Autumn Week 3 - Questionnaire Design (2)

8/6/2019 Autumn Week 3 - Questionnaire Design (2)

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Sampling

Question types

Answer types

Questionnaire design

Coding


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Who to ask: your target population

How many people: 20

Avoid a biased sample, e.g. if askingabout drinking behaviour in men andwomen: Dont just ask women

Dont just ask people in a bar

Dont just ask tee-totallers


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You must adhere to a strict code of ethics in your

research: http://www.bps.org.uk/the-society/code-

of-conduct/ Participants must:

give consent to take part

not be coerced into participating

be free to withdraw at any time

Administering your questionnaires has ethics

approval.


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Participants create their own answers

What is your age?

Are you a smoker? What are your favourite TV programmes?

How much do you like biscuits?


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Experimenter provides participants with options

Choice of category: Are you a smoker? Never smoked Current

smoker Ex-smoker

Likert scale: How strongly do you agree with the statement I likebiscuits

x 1 Strongly disagree

x 2 Disagree

x 3 Neutral

x 4 Agree

x 5 Strongly agree

Checklists: Circle the TV programmes that you watch

Rating scales: How much do you like this drink, on a scale of1-10?

Ranking: Order these sports in terms ofhow much you like them


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Open-ended

Exploratory

Useful when you cant cover all the possible answers

Closed-format

Easy and quick to fill in

Doesnt matter how literate or articulate you are

Easy to code, record, and analyse results quantitatively

Easy to report results


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If the answer to the question is anumber that represents an amount, e.g. IQ score Height

How long it takes to complete a jigsaw puzzle

Likert or rating scale responses


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If the answer to the question is:

a word

x Yes

a sentence

x I think that biscuits are tasty

a description

x Physics student

a code that represents a categoryx 1 = undergraduate, 2 = postgraduate

NB: numerical codes can be used to representqualitative responses BUT this does not transform

qualitative data into quantitative data.


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Keep it short and simple.

Start with an introduction/ welcome message

Allow dont know/ not applicable/ other/

none responses to all possibly relevant

questions

Say thank you to your participants


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Go from general to particular

Go from easy to difficult

Go from factual to abstract

Start with closed format questions

Do not start with demographic and personal

questions


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Start with a title

Tell your participant that their responses will

be anonymous: assign each

questionnaire anumber instead of asking for names

Avoid personal and sensitive questions

Be aware that you may bias answers simply

by being there Try to avoid biased wording, e.g. Would you

agree that the death penalty is a bad idea?


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Giving numbers to categories in qualitativedata is called coding

E.g. Yes becomes 1 and No becomes 2 Codes can be allocated either before the

question is answered (pre-coding) orafterwards (post-coding)

We will come back to this next week


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Think about your sample

Create your questionnaire

Pre-test the questionnaire (if practical) Conduct interviews

Enter data

Analyse the data

Write your report


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Put together your group questionnaire

Get a tutor to check over your questionnaire

before you leave class

Try to have asked at least 10 people to fill outyour questionnaire

Pro tip: If psychology students are a suitable

Autumn Week 3 - Questionnaire Design (2)

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