Questionnaire Design
Dates: 22nd November 2011
Duration: 1 day (9.30am — 4:30pm)
Level: Introductory
Course Fee: £175 (£125 for those from educational institutions)
CCSR offers 5 free places to research staff and students within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester and the North West Doctoral Training Centre.
Course Leader: Pamela Campanelli and Kingsley Purdam
Course Requirements: Participants should have a basic familiarity with surveys and questionnaires.
Course Summary
Rubbish in, rubbish out – have you ever discovered too late that your survey questions did not deliver useful or useable data? Through looking at a wide range of pitfalls, this course explores ways to assess the effectiveness of existing questionnaires as well as how to write successful new ones. It combines suggestions from the research literature on questionnaire design with a very practical approach. Common errors in the wording of individual questions are examined as well as how to combine individual questions into a meaningful questionnaire. Special features for interview versus self-completion surveys will also be discussed.
Please note that the design of standardised multi-item scales based on psychometric principles will not be covered as this is handled in a separate course.
Course Objectives
After this course, participants should:
- Have a greater awareness of the different aspects involved in writing good survey questions and questionnaires, taking into account the important differences between questionnaire design for interview surveys versus self-completion surveys
- Have the tools to critique existing surveys
- Have the knowledge to be able to write their own high quality questionnaires
Target Audience
This course is suitable for people new to questionnaire design as well as those who have experience in questionnaire design, but would like to brush up on the latest thinking. It would be particularly appropriate for those who anticipate conducting a survey and who wish to learn about questionnaire design. The course stands alone, but is designed as a precursor to other courses in survey design, in particular, the courses on ‘Cognitive Interviewing for Testing Survey Questions’ and ‘Standardised Multi-Item Scale Development for Surveys’ . Together the courses provide an excellent basis for developing your expertise in survey methods.
Preliminary Reading
- Fowler, F. J. Jr. (1995), Improving Survey Questions, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
For information about questionnaires and surveys see the Question Bank http://www.surveynet.ac.uk/sqb/qb/