How to construct a Questionnaire

Preparation

· Brainstorm. Write down all the questions you think may be useful.

· Consult previous studies in this area. Have previous students done the
same thing? There may be questionnaires that have been done that you
could draw on, or test out in another area of the city, or with a different
age group, or different school etc.

· Decide upon qualitative or quantitative approach

· Decide on your sample: Depending on your specific project, you need to

decide what would be a suitable sample. Everyone’s project will be
different but bear these issues in mind:

Gender balance

Age balance

Religious balance

Class?

Depending on your project you might want to distinguish your answers

according to class, age, ethnicity: accordingly you need to include questions
for each respondent to complete that may include age, sex, salary, religion,
job title, level of management etc.

How large should the sample be?

Again, this depends on the project. Your dissertation usually works best
the narrower it is. The size of your sample affects the extent to which you
can extrapolate your findings to Birmingham, or Britain.

· Decide on your response scale. A ‘yes/no’ response scale is quite limiting.

A sliding scale can be more expressive. Sliding scales generally run from
 Agree strongly to disagree strongly with a number of options in between.
You need to decide whether you will have a completely neutral mid point
or not. For example:

Agree strongly Tend to agree Tend to disagree Disagree

Strongly

Very important Rather important Not very important Not

important

OR:

Put into the middle of the scale ‘neither agree nor disagree’ or ‘neither
important nor unimportant. This offers the respondents a ‘don’t care’
option, but it is not always desirable. On the other hand, if you eliminate
this option you might frustrate those respondents who do not wish to be
forced to express a view. Rothwell suggests that you could provide a
mid-point but urge your respondents to avoid using it unless it is the only
answer that really reflects their views.

He also advises that you avoid phrasing your questions so that they all
run neatly down one column – something called ‘response set’. He
suggests that it is good to avoid this because the respondent tends to
get into a rut by answering all the questions in the same way. ‘The
danger is that, after answering several items in the same position along
the scale, respondents will expect their view to fall in that position and
not give each item due thought’ (1995: 27).

· Do a pilot run with friends asking for feedback such as: how long did it
take to complete? Were the instructions clear? Were any questions
ambiguous? Were any questions offensive? Was the questionnaire easy
to follow? Were any significant topics omitted?

Questionnaire Layout
Include a note about who you are, the aim of the questionnaire and
assurance of confidentiality.
· End with a note of thanks and instructions for how to return the
questionnaire

· Use appropriate type: - good font size and font style (especially if
working with people who may have poor eye sight)

· Use good quality paper

· Use the space generously – avoid a cramped, untidy appearance.

· Using coloured paper is helpful (stands out, might not be thrown away)

· Explain how the questionnaire is to be completed (circling answer

options, ticking boxes, how many boxes they can tick etc.)

The Questions
· Ask the respondent to tell you about themselves

· Select the most relevant questions only. Length of questionnaire

depends on the issues you need to comment on. If you wanted to
question Muslim women on why they wear the veil you might need to know
whether they think it is Islamically prescribed or simply a cultural
fashion, does one’s age make a difference, does peer pressure come into
it, is it worn so that women can recognize each other, is it a good
identity marker, does the veil have to conform to a certain style to be
acceptable, does it make young girls feel self-conscious when in state
schools where Muslim children are in the minority, is it a barrier to
religious dialogue and tolerance, is it an empowering thing because it
prevents women being ogled at, is it a sexually exotic thing because the
husband gets to unwrap his bride, is it an oppressive thing that prevents
full participation in society on equal terms with men? If all these issues
were in your mind then you potentially have quite a long and detailed
questionnaire. In order to arrive at the optimum length you need to:

Know what you want to achieve before you design the questionnaire.

· Use simple English that is easily understood.

· Avoid ambiguous language. If you were to ask ‘what do you think is the
most popular reason for praying?’ your respondents may not be sure what
you mean by popular. Does it mean most favoured or liked, or does it
mean most used?

· Avoid double-barrelled questions such as ‘have any of your prayers been

answered and how do you cope when they are not?’

· Avoid leading or loaded questions such as ‘do you agree that all
Christians must pray’

Response Rate

For randomly circulated questionnaires (for example if you leave them in a

box on the OLRC counter) you can expect a very low response rate indeed.

Better response rate if you include a SAE but this is expensive.

Better response rate if you visit the community and give it out and wait for
returns or promise to return the next week – leave a box into which they
can post their responses (thus assuring confidentiality). However, this
leaves you vulnerable to:

Volunteer responses

If your methods means that you only get replies from those who were
interested enough to post them in the box, or post them back to you, how
might this skew your data?

· Those who didn’t reply might have strong adverse feelings

· The findings cannot be extrapolated with confidence.

Arthur Rothwell: ‘if you were examining opinions regarding a particular

library service, it would not be enough to gather only the views of those who
chose to answer a questionnaire voluntarily taken from a pile left at the
issue desk, as this might omit people in a hurry, perhaps due to slow service
in the library’ (Questionnaire Design 1995:8-9 emphasis added).
 Time Required

This is a typical time scale that I have modified from Arthur Rothwell:

A Identify topic areas and develop initial items 1 week

B Discuss with tutor and revise 1 week

C Pilot run and revision 1 week

D Print questionnaire and mail 1 week

E Waiting time before all answers received 4 weeks

F Analyse data and prepare tables 2 weeks

10 weeks

Further reading:

The Open University (1979) Block 4 Data Collection Procedures Milton

Keynes: The Open University

Robert A Peterson (2000) Constructing Effective Questionnaires London:

Sage

Arthur Rothwell (1995) Questionnaire Design Leicester: De Montfort

University

M.B. Youngman (1982) Designing and Analysing Questionnaires Nottingham:

University of Nottingham