Surveys and Interviews

Writing the questions

Before you start

• Know what information is required

• Make a list of all the things you will need to communicate in your report to allow your client to make an informed decision

• Use this list to guide the formation of your questions

General Features

• Survey/interview should be long enough to contain all the essential questions that must be asked to obtain the information you need

• Survey/interview should not take a long time to complete (10 to 15 minutes is recommended but interviews can be longer)

Question Characteristics

• Brief and simple in construction

• Free of compound phrases

• Clear with few or no adjectives

• Positive rather than negative

Question Types

• Open

• Dichotomous

• Multiple Choice

• Declarative

• Rating scales

Open

• Leaves the answer open to the respondent to decide what information to give. Requires discussion or writing by respondent

• Example: In your opinion, how would a web page benefit your business? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dichotomous

• Can be answered in one of two ways (usually relies on opposites such as yes, no).

• Example: Do you own a computer? Yes ___ No ___.

Multiple Choice • Offers a selection of choices to the

respondent and more than one can be selected

• Example: What do you use the Web for?___ Research for school

___ Finding information on topics of interest for personal use.

___ News

___ Shopping

___ Entertainment

___ Other, Please specify ___________________________________

Declarative• Similar to multiple choice questions but ask

the respondent to indicate a reaction to a series of statements

• Example: Which most represents your view of using the Web in the classroom.

___ The use of the Web is too distracting for the students

___ The use of the Web would produce lower quality information

___ The use of the Web would stimulate student interest

___ The use of the Web is essential for students today

___ The use of the Web is just a fad and should not be supported by schools

Rating Scales

• Asks respondents to rank a list of choices or assign a value to a given statement.

• Example: rank the following statements from one to five, where one represents your top choice and five that which you would be least likely to choose. Or

• Example: On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very poor and 10 being excellent , how would you rate _________?

Questions to Avoid

• Leading questions

• Misleading questions

• Ambiguous

• Double

• Uninformative

Leading

• Worded in such a way as to influence the respondent to give a certain answer

Do you want you business to take advantage of the success offered by the internet?

Misleading

• Misleads the respondent and forces her/him to respond in a way the complies with the views of the questioner

Do you believe that large corporations should have control over the Web material so they can charge excessive rates for their services?

Ambiguous

• Does not have one clear meaning

Are you interested in building a web site?

Double

• Asks two questions at once

Would you like a graphically rich, fast loading Web site

Uninformative

• Provides meaningless or unreliable information

Do you know a lot about Web sites?

Wording Questions• Pay attention to the connotation and

denotation of words

• Use words that have uniformity and preciseness of meaning

• Use words that are free from undue influence, prestige, or bias

• Use words that don’t arouse emotional or irrational responses

Ordering Questions

• Order questions so that they arouse and hold the interest of the respondent

• Order the questions so that they do not influence the responses to each other

• Position the questions carefully and consider the fatigue of the respondent

Avoid

• Do not rely heavily on the memory of the respondent

• Do not use overly general questions

• Do not use questions that require self-analysis or information that is too personal

• Do not use questions that require considerable thinking

And finally . . .Examine Questions

• For each question, determine if it will provide useful information, if inclusion will make the survey or interview too long, or if a more important question should be asked instead