Questionnaire

• Questionnaire is described as “a document that contains a set of questions, the answers to which are to be provided personally by the respondents”.
• Questionnaire is the structured set of questions usually sent by mail, though sometimes it is delivered by hand also. The hand delivery could be at home, school/college, office, organization, and so on.
• The importance of the survey is explained to the respondents through a covering letter. Usually, a self-addressed stamped envelop is sent to the respondents along with the questionnaire to reduce their expenses.
• The follow up request for returning the questionnaire is made through repeated letters.

Questionnaire is used as a tool when…

• Very large samples are desired,
• Costs have to be kept low,
• the target groups who are likely to have high response rates are specialized,
• ease of administration is necessary, and
• moderate response rate is considered satisfactory.

Following guidelines should be followed for framing and asking questions:

• Questions should be clear and unambiguous:
  • The question like, “What do you think about the proposed peace plan for Kashmir?” may not be clear to respondent who does not know anything about the peace plan.
• Questions should be relevant:
  • Sometimes the respondents are asked to give opinions on issues on which they have never given any thought, e.g., “What is your opinion on the economic policies of the BJP, the Congress and the CPI parties?” Such questions are bound to be disregarded by the respondents.
• Questions should be short:
  • Long and complicated items are to be avoided. The respondent should be able to read an item quickly, understand its meaning and think of an answer without difficulty.
• Negative questions should be avoided:
  • The appearance of a negation in the question paves the way for easy misinterpretation.
  • For example, asking to agree or disagree with the statement, “India should not recognize the military rule in Fiji”, a sizeable portion of the respondents will not read the word ‘not’ and answer on that basis.
• Biased terms should be avoided:
  • Prejudice affects the answers. For example, the question, “Have military rulers in the neighbouring country always hampered our country’s progress?” may encourage some respondents to give particular response more than other questions do.
• Respondents must be competent to answer:
  • The researcher should always ask himself whether the respondents he has chosen are competent enough to answer questions on the issue of research. For example, asking daily wage labourers to give their views on ‘communal violence’ may not be rational.
  • Similarly, asking students to indicate the manner in which university’s total income ought to be spent will be wrong because students may not have fairly good knowledge of the nature of activities and the costs involved in them.
• Respondents must be willing to answer:
  • Many a time people are unwilling to share opinions with others, e.g., asking Muslims about Pakistan’s attitude towards Muslims in India.
    

Types of Questions:

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary;

• Primary Questions elicit information directly related to the research topic.
  • Each question provides information about a specific aspect of the topic.
  • For example, for determining the type of family (whether it is husband-dominant, wife dominant, equalitarian), the question “who takes decisions in your family” is a primary question.
• Secondary questions elicit information which do not relate directly to the topic,
  • i.e., the information is of secondary importance. They only guard the truthfulness of the respondents, e.g., in the above topic, the question “who decides the nature of gift to be given in marriage to family relative” or “who finally selects the boy with whom the daughter is to be married” are the secondary questions.
• The tertiary questions are of neither primary nor of secondary importance.
  • These only establish a framework that allows convenient data collection and sufficient information without exhausting or biasing the respondent.

Closed-ended and Open-ended Questions:

• The closed-ended questions are the fixed-choice questions. They require the respondent to choose a response from those provided by the researcher. Here is one example: “Whom do you consider an ideal teacher?”
  • who takes teaching seriously;
  • who is always available to students for discussions and guidance;
  • whose approach to students’ problems is flexible;
  • who does not believe in punishing students;
  • who takes interest in co-curricular and extracurricular activities.
• The open-ended questions are free-response questions which require respondents to answer in their own words. For example;
  • Whom do you consider an ideal teacher?
  • How would you rate the performance of the last government?
  • What do you feel is the most important issue facing India today?

The advantages of open-ended questions are:

• The researcher gets insight in respondent’s understanding.
• When the total answers categories are very large (say, 50 or more), it would be awkward to list all of them on a questionnaire; but if some were omitted, then there would not be appropriate answers available for all respondents.
• Since the respondent gets freedom in answering, the researcher gets more and varied information based on the respondent’s logic and thought processes. Sometimes, the information and responses received are so unexpected that the researcher’s ideas are completely changed.
• They are preferable for complex issues that cannot be condensed into a few small categories.

The disadvantages of open-ended questions are :

• Sometimes responses received are irrelevant.
• It is difficult to classify and code all responses.
• Since the data are not standardized, statistical analysis and computation of percentages become difficult.
• Sometimes the responses given are very lengthy and analyzing them becomes time-consuming.
• Semi-literate respondents find it difficult to answer open questions since they require better ability to express one’s feelings.

The advantages of closed-ended questions are:

• They provide a greater uniformity of responses.
• It is easy to code, score and process standard answers which saves time and money.
• The respondent has not to use much brain as he is often clearer about the meaning of question.
• Little time is taken to complete questionnaire.
• Answers can be compared from person to person.
• Irrelevant responses are not received and the answers are relatively complete, e.g., an openended question “how often do you smoke” may receive an answer “whenever I feel like smoking”, but a closed ended question may receive an answer, “one packet a day, or two packets in a day, or four cigarettes in a day”, and so on.
• Response rate is high, particularly in sensitive questions like income, age, etc. If the answer in closed ended question is a category, the respondent may easily identify himself with the range in which his income/age falls.

The disadvantages of closed-ended questions are:

• The respondent may not get all alternative responses as some important responses might have been omitted by the researcher.
• The respondent does not think and does not involve himself in giving free information. He ticks even wrong answer.
• Many a time the respondents do not find those answers in the closed questions which correspond to their true feelings or attitudes.
• The respondent who does not know the response guesses and chooses one of the convenient responses or gives an answer randomly.
• Detecting the mistake whether the respondent has ticked the right answer is not possible.

Direct and Indirect Questions :

• Direct questions are personal questions which elicit information about the respondent himself/herself, e.g., “Do you believe in God?”
• Indirect questions seek information about other people, e.g., “Do you think that people of your status and age believe in God now-a-days?” Other examples are:
• Indirect Question : Do college teachers these days read more English or Hindi Books?
• Direct Question : Do you read English books?
• Indirect Question : How would you describe the relations among members in your family?
• Direct Question : Do you quarrel with your spouse frequently/occasionally/rarely/never?

Nominal, Ordinal and Interval Questions:

• Nominal question is one in which its response falls in two or more categories, e.g., male/female; rich/poor, married/unmarried; rural/urban; illiterate/educated; Shia/Sunni; Hindu/Muslim. Nominal question is also called classification scale.
• Ordinal question is one in which the responses are placed in rank order of categories.
  • The categories may be ranked from highest to lowest, greatest to least, or first to last.
    • For Example– Smoking: regularly/occasionally/never
    • Reserving 33 per cent seats for women in Parliament: Agree/disagree/don’t know
    • Relations with colleagues in office excellent/satisfactory/dissatisfactory/can’t say
  • Ordinal scales are sometimes referred to as ranking scales.
• Interval question is one in which the distance between two numbers is equal. For example:
  • Present age: 10 or below/11-20/21-30/31-40/41 and above
  • Income per annum: Below Rs. 18,000/18,000- 36,000/36,000-54,000/54,000-72,000/Above 72,000
  • Age at marriage: Below 18/18-22/22-26/26- 30/Above 30.

Steps in Questionnaire Construction

Questionnaires are constructed in a systematic manner. The process goes through a number of inter-related steps. The most commonly steps are (Sarantakos):

• Preparation: The researcher thinks of various items to be covered in the questionnaire, arrangement of these items in relation to one another, and taking into consideration questions prepared and used in other similar studies.
• Constructing the first draft: The researcher formulates a number of questions including direct/indirect, closed/open-ended and primary/secondary/tertiary questions.
• Self-evaluation: The researcher thinks about relevance, symmetry, clarity in language, etc.
• External evaluation: The first draft is given to one or two experts/colleagues for scrutiny and suggestions for changes.
• Revision: After receiving suggestions, some questions are eliminated, some changed and some new questions added.
• Pre-test or pilot study: A pre-test or a pilot study is undertaken to check the suitability of the questionnaire as a whole.
• Revision: The minor and major changes may be made on the basis of experience gained in pretesting.
• Second pre-testing: The revised questionnaire is then subjected to a second test and amended, if necessary.
• Preparing final draft: After editing, checking spelling, space for response, pre-coding, and the final draft is prepared.

Limitations of Questionnaire

• The mailed questionnaires can be used only for educated people. This restricts the number of respondents.
• The return rate of questionnaires is low. The common return rate is 30 to 40 per cent.
• The mailing address may not be correct which may omit some eligible respondents. Thus, the sample selected many a time is described as biased.
• Sometimes different respondents interpret questions differently. The misunderstanding cannot be corrected.
• There may be bias in the response selectivity because the respondent having no interest in the topic may not give response to all questions. Since the researcher is not present to explain the meaning of certain concepts, the respondent may leave the question blank.
• Questionnaires do not provide an opportunity to collect additional information while they are being completed.
• Researchers are not sure whether the person to whom the questionnaire was mailed has himself answered the questions or somebody else has filled up the questionnaire.
• Many questions remain unanswered. The partial response affects the analysis.
• The respondent can consult other persons before filling in the questionnaire. The responses, therefore, cannot be viewed as his opinions.
• The reliability of respondent’s background information cannot be verified. A middle-class person can identify himself as rich person or a person of intermediate caste can describe himself as upper-caste person.
• Since the size of the questionnaire has to be kept small, full information cannot be secured from the respondents.
• There is lack of depth or probing for a more specific answer.

Advantages of Questionnaire

• Lower cost: Questionnaires are less expensive than other methods. Even the staff required is not much as either the researcher himself may mail or one or two investigators may be appointed for hand distributing the questionnaires.
• Time saving: Since the respondents may be geographically dispersed and sample size may be very large, the time required for getting back the questionnaires may be little greater but usually less than that for face-to-face interviews. Thus, since all questionnaires are sent simultaneously and most of the replies are received in 10-15 days, schedules take months to complete. In simple terms, questionnaires produce quick results.
• Accessibility to widespread respondents: When the respondents are separated geographically, they can be reached by correspondence which saves travel cost.
• No interviewer’s bias: Since the interviewer is not physically present at interviewee’s place, he cannot influence his answers, either by prompting or by giving his own opinion or by misreading the question.
• Greater anonymity: The absence of the interviewer assures anonymity which enables respondent to express free opinions and answers even to socially undesirable questions. The absence of the interviewer assures privacy to the respondents because of which they willingly give details of all events and incidents they would have not revealed otherwise.
• Respondent’s convenience: The respondent can fillin the questionnaire leisurely at his convenience. He is not forced to complete all questions at one time. Since he fills up the questionnaire in spare time, he can answer easy questions first and take time for difficult questions.
• Standardized wordings: Each respondent is exposed to same words and therefore there is little difference in understanding questions. The comparison of answers is thus facilitated.
• No variation: Questionnaires are a stable, consistent and uniform measure, without variation. 

The End of the Blog : Questionnaire