questionnaires

Definition:
Question schedules for fully structured face-to-face, telephone or postal sample survey enquiries. The design of questions to minimize bias and non-response is an art in which experience is needed. Lengthy and repetitious questionnaires are particularly to be avoided. The poor quality of data produced by poor questionnaire design is seldom apparent at later stages, but nevertheless affects results greatly. Piloting, or small-scale trial of questionnaires by research executives is desirable. The questions are set out in a sequence, which may be varied for individual respondents according to their responses to earlier questions by routing instructions to the interviewer. Questions may be open-ended, where verbatim responses are transcribed by the interviewer, to be classified later. They may he closed-ended, where the respondents are presented with a limited number of answers from which to choose, or pre-coded, where the range of answers can be foreseen. Closed-ended questions are easier for interviewers and analysis, but may lead to bias. The questionnaire is usually set out to facilitate subsequent data capture for computer. The questionnaire may also be presented on a visual display unit screen for direct data entry by key depression.

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