Questionnaire Design—Does yours match your research
objectives? If not, expect failure!
The Market Research Society’s Questionnaire Design Guidelines
of February 2002 state that researchers must ensure that the objectives
of a survey are fully translated into a series of questions, which
will, as far as possible, obtain the required data. It may seem
obvious that the questionnaire design would simply evolve from the
research objectives; but this is not always the case.
Customer Satisfaction
Let’s assume you’ve been asked to do the following:
“Determine the level of customer satisfaction in our ability
to deliver and support our primary product.”
You have a viable list of customers and have appropriately screened
the respondents to ensure that they should be included in the study.
You begin with a “wish list” of applicable questions.
In this type of scenario, the questions you pose to customers should
be targeted and specific, not open-ended. The following example
illustrates.
Please think about the quality of marketing communications for
your system. How would you rate the following marketing efforts
overall on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is poor and 7 is excellent?
One can see that while this illustration asks for specific information,
it also obtains information on a variety of attributes related to
your objective. In addition, the 7-point unanchored scale is used
to obtain the response variance.
Also important is the positioning of the “overall opinion”
question, where personal preference might play a more important
role. While most agree that such a question is essential, one needs
to consider the “personality” of the study in deciding
whether to place the question at the beginning or end of the questionnaire.
There are many variables to consider when designing a research
questionnaire. Carefully considering your overall objectives can
help you decide how specific you need to be when structuring the
questions you will ultimately pose to your respondents. ‡
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