Questionnaire Design

Questionnaire is the authoritative evaluation tool in a survey process and should not be taken flippantly. Careful attention is required for designing of a questionnaire, as it’s a long process. QD begins with the undersatnding of the obejctives, aims and how it would help the research. Like any scientific process survey is also a science and questionnaires are like any scientific experiment. The data is always collected to achiheve objective and analysed furthermore, post results.

Questionnaires are resourceful and adaptable, which allows collection of subjective as well as objective data through the use of open or closed format questions. The questions of a questionnaire communicate its quality.

Effective use of a well-designed questionnaire can gather information on all apestcs like performance of the test system as well as information on specific components of the system. Demographic questions on the participants are used to correlate performance and satisfaction among different groups of users.

Steps to design and administer a questionnaire:

1). To define the Objectives of the survey
2). To determine the Sampling Group
3). To build the Questionnaire
4). To pre-test the Questionnaire
5). To interpret the Results

Types of Questions:

Open Ended & Close Ended: Open ended questions do not have prompted opinions or there are no predetermined set of responses, and the participant is free to answer whatever strikes his/her mind.These type of question are good for soliciting subjective data. The advantage of this type is that the variety of responses is wider and more truly reflect the opinions of the respondents. Usually the open ended questions are asked towards th end of the questionnaire.

Closed ended questions posses multiple-choice options of which reposnednts has to choose one to reflect his/her opinion.Its easy for the respondent to choose one among the provided options.There is no clear consensus on the number of options that should be given in an closed format question. Points to be remembered while building a questionnaire:

1). Clarity: Questions must be clear, laconic, and definite.
2). Leading Questions: A closed ended question must provide answers that cover the whole range of responses which
are equally distributed throughout the range.
3). Phrasing: The questions should be properly phrased so that here is no confusion and the respondents clearly
understand the aim of the same.