1. 2.4: Creating Questions
February 22, 2011

2. Surveys and Questionnaires
Surveys can be conducted in a variety of ways
Interviews
Mail-in or Telephone questionnaires
Electronic Surveys (internet)
Focus Groups
Anonymous surveys
Allow for more honest and forthright responses
Alleviate concerns of persecution

3. Survey and Questionnaire Design
“Every questionnaire must be handcrafted. It is not only the questionnaire writing that must be “artful”; each questionnaire is also unique, an original. A designer must cut and try, see how it looks and sounds, see how people react to it, and then cut and try again.”
J. Converse and Spresser, Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1986),48.

4. Question Styles Open questions
Questions that will be answered in the respondent’s own words.
Allows for a wide variety of answers that may make it difficult to interpret the results.
Ex: “How do you feel about salary arbitration for professional athletes?”

5. Question Styles (cont)
Closed Questions
Questions that require the respondent to select from a given list of responses.
Ex: Which statement best describes your opinions towards salary arbitration for professional athletes?
□ Love it □ Hate it □ Couldn’t care less
Questions that have exact responses
Ex: How many times a day do you think about salary arbitration for professional athletes.

6. Question types Informative Checklist Ranking Rating
What sports do you enjoy watching
Checklist
Which of the following sports do you enjoy watching
Ranking
Rank the following sports from most like to watch to least like to watch
Rating
How satisfied are you after watching sporting events?
□ very □ incredibly □ unbelievably □ You have no idea

7. Bias
One of the easiest ways to introduce bias into your questionnaire is through the wording of the questions themselves.
This can be done by:
Use of adjectives
Use of abbreviations and jargon
Restriction of choices
Use of negatives
Insensitivity

8. Bias (cont)
We even have to consider the sequence in which we ask questions
We want to avoid scaffolding questions to lead respondents to desired answers

9. Homework
Pg 105 #1 ,2 , 4, 6-8,10,12