Questionnaires are a vital part of research that allows us to collect data that will allow us to discover hidden insights about people. However, they are not without limitations.
Questions can be self-administered, with participants answering all questions themselves, or researcher-administered, where the research team interviews a sample of respondents by phone, in-person, or online. Self-administered questionnaires tend to have lower response rates than researcher-administered questionnaires, due in part to the impersonal nature of mailed paper surveys and automated telephone menu systems.
Web-based surveys offer a range of advantages, such as greater reach than traditional telephone or mail-based surveys and the ability to reach a wide audience. They can also present some problems, like the difficulty in reaching a representative sample of the population. Additionally, they are affected by issues such as screen size as well as hardware platform, operating system, and browser settings, which could influence responses.
When designing a survey, it is crucial to think about the research goals and objectives. When creating questions, it’s essential to know the target audience. For example you should know if they can understand and respond in a way that is understandable or if they have the time to complete a long questionnaire.
To ensure that new questionnaires function as intended, it’s essential to test them prior to use using qualitative methods such as focus groups, cognitive interviews, or pretesting. Questions are susceptible to “question-order effects” where the answers to earlier questions can affect the answers to subsequent ones.