Questionnaire Design (Essay Sample)

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Questionnaire Design
A questionnaire is one of the best and most inexpensive ways to collect data for any purposes such as scientific research and information collection for social uses. A well-designed questionnaire collects only the necessary information and makes room for any further queries that may emerge from the data collected (Bernhardt and Bradley 65). Simply put, it anticipates data query requirements and seeks to satisfy any questions regarding the accuracy of the data collected. A well-designed questionnaire should always meet the research objectives (70). As obvious as this may seem, the researcher tends to lose sight of the objective at times and ends up bloating the questionnaire with unnecessary questions, and this should be avoided at all times.  The questionnaire should always strive to obtain information in its most accurate and complete form possible. The designer should ensure the full comprehension of the questionnaire by the respondents and should strive to ensure their compliance with the questions requirements. The respondents should not find it difficult to answer the questions and doing so in the most truthful manner possible.  A well-designed questionnaire should make allowance for the researcher to accurately perceive the respondents’ answers, in such a manner that the researcher can easily record them. The design should also ensure that the data obtained is compliant with the various means and methods of data analysis and interpretation. Thus, any open-ended questions should not be ambiguous, and should thus guide the respondent to offer the required information without masking it in too much innuendo that is not related to the study.  The questionnaire should have the right blend of multiple choice and open-ended questions. Multiple-choice questions are usually a more advantageous option for the researcher, since the data is easily modelled, and there are very few variables to consider when analysing such data (Davino and Luigi 105). On the down side, however, one cannot comprise a questionnaire fully of multiple-choice questions. In some discipline such as market research, the researcher has to allow for a few other variables, which he or she was not aware of to become known and even affect the outcome of the research effort. Open-ended questions allow the respondent to answer or offer up information in a manner, they feel is comfortable to them and that which is relevant to the study (Brace 7). They allow additional information to be revealed, and this is beneficial for some studies where the variables considered are multivariate and as diverse as the possible number of permutations of the plausible situations. It normally occurs in social sciences where each different person thinks on a different scale, and the different combinations can offer an infinite number of possibilities (9). That said, it is usually more difficult to analyse such questions and their responses, and that is why they have to be made in such a way that they allow the respondent freedom to answer as they please, but within the context of the study.  A balanced ratio between multiple choice questions and open-ended question runs at about 80 to 20 (Wilson 23). Different schools of thought vary on these ratios, but the questionnaire should ultimately reflect the purpose it is meant to serve. Other equally important considerations are the length and complexity of the questionnaire. It should be created to reflect the kind of respondents being targeted and should ...