Questionnaire
Development
The survey form to be completed or the set of interview
questions is the heart of any serious survey effort.
Without a sound questionnaire, any project is destined to
fail. Constructing the right questionnaire is part science
and part art - and it depends on having hands-on experience
as well as formal training.
Prerequisite to crafting an effective questionnaire is
understanding the research objectives. Perhaps the most
critical path to understanding is listening carefully to
articulation of the objectives and, then, probing anything
which is unclear, incomplete, or not expressed in a way
that can be addressed through a survey. It is only after a
thorough back-and-forth dialogue produces a set of
researchable objectives that a first draft of the survey
instrument should be attempted.
Of course, familiarity with the research topic also helps.
Knowing the relevant issues and what types of questions are
usually asked speeds the process. But specific subject
matter expertise is not always necessary. What the survey
specialist needs to know to develop the questionnaire (and,
later, do the analysis) can often be acquired "on the job"
via in-depth discussion with the client.
Questionnaire development is an iterative process of draft,
review and comment, redraft, further review, and so forth,
until a near-final version is ready to be tested.
Pretesting is the next step for any new or substantially
revised questionnaire. Resources dedicated to testing the
questionnaire are always well spent. Thorough pretesting
helps avoid costly mistakes and usually improves the
validity, reliability, and utility of the data that will be
collected.
Self-administered questionnaires (often sent and returned
through the mail or completed online) are quite different
than interactive interview questionnaires used in telephone
and face-to-face surveys. GR&C has decades of
experience with both types based on more than one hundred
studies.
