Question Design
It is important to design questions very carefully. A poorly designed questionaire renders results meaningless. There are many factors to consider. Babbie gives the following pointers:
- Make items clear (don't assume the person you are questioning knows the terms you are using).
- Avoid double-barreled questions (make sure the question asks only one clear thing).
- Respondent must be competent to answer (don't ask questions that the respondent won't accurately be able to answer).
- Questions should be relevant (don't ask questions on topics that respondents don't care about or haven't thought about).
- Short items are best (so that they may be read, understood, and answered quickly).
- Avoid negative items (if you ask whether librarians should not be paid more, it will confuse respondents).
- Avoid biased items and terms (be sensitive to the effect of your wording on respondents).
Busha and Harter provide the following list of 10 hints:
- Unless the nature of a survey definitely warrants their usage, avoid slang, jargon, and technical terms.
- Whenever possible, develop consistent response methods.
- Make questions as impersonal as possible.
- Do not bias later responses by the wording used in earlier questions.
- As an ordinary rule, sequence questions from the general to the specific.
- If closed questions are employed, try to develop exhaustive and mutually exclusive response alternatives.
- Insofar as possible, place questions with similar content together in the survey instrument.
- Make the questions as easy to answer as possible.
- When unique and unusual terms need to be defined in questionnaire items, use very clear definitions.
- Use an attractive questionnaire format that conveys a professional image.
As may be seen, designing good questions is much more difficult than it seems. One effective way of making sure that questions measure what they are supposed to measure is to test them out first, using small focus groups.
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