1. Designing Questionnaires
Friday 3rd March 2005
Designing Questionnaires
Objectives: To understand, interpret and design questionnaires to collect data.

2. A questionnaire is a set of questions designed to obtain data from a population.
Anyone who answers a questionnaire is called a respondent.
All questionnaires should:
Be clear and brief as possible.
Use clear and simple language.
Minimise bias
Should not ask leading questions e.g., Why do you think pubs should be open 24 hours day?

3. Types of Questions: Open ended question Closed question
Has no suggested answers and will give people a chance to respond how they want.
Has a fixed set of responses and a scale of opinions, e.g.
“English football supporters are a bunch of hooligans”
Strongly agree
Agree
No View
Disagree
Strongly disagree

4. However, to test whether or not a survey will be a success in terms of receiving the required information, often, a pilot survey is carried out, which is a small replica of the experiment that is needed to be carried out.