Collecting Primary Data: Questionnaires

1. Collecting Primary Data: Questionnaires

2. Objectives After this session you will be able to: • Plan and design valid and reliable questionnaires. • Describe the processes involved in collecting primary data, including piloting. • Demonstrate the skills for writing appropriate individual questions and designing questionnaires. • Write appropriate documentation to accompany questionnaires.

3. Types of questionnaire Questionnaire Self-administered Interview-administered Postal questionnaire Delivery & collection questionnaire Focus group Telephone interview Structured interview Onlinequestionnaire

4. Why questionnaires? • Low costs (time and money). • Quick inflow of data. • Can reach many people. • Quick coding of closed questions. • Reliability of data.

5. Questionnaires – disadvantages • Low response rates (threat to reliability). • No opportunity for probing questions. • No opportunity for respondent to seek clarity (threat to validity). • Socially desirable responses (SDRs) (threat to validity).

6. Face validity • Do the questions make sense? • Are all concepts in the questions understandable? • Are the questions interesting and motivating to answer? • Are the instructions for completing the questionnaire clear? • Is the questionnaire of the right length?

7. Achieving face validity • Get your questionnaire reviewed by 15 of your peers. • Get them to write down the problems they find on the questionnaire. • Talk to them. • Note which elements need improving and comment on how you did this in your Methodology.

8. Design: construct validity Construct validity: an instrument measures the constructs it was intended to measure. Theory Concept Constructs Question sets Marketing Relation-ship Marketing - Loyalty- Internal customers- Supply chain Question sets - Loyalty- Internal customers- Supply chain

9. Measuring attitudes: reliability Reliability: the consistency between two measures – sufficient numbers of questions for each construct. • Loyalty: • To me, brand loyalty is important. • I tend to buy the same brand all the time. • If I like a brand I always buy it in preference to others. • Brand loyalty is unimportant in my buying decisions.

10. Reliability of responses Loyalty: • To me, brand loyalty is important. • I tend to buy the same brand all the time. • If I like a brand I always buy it in preference to others. • Brand loyalty is unimportant in my buying decisions. Note: these questions will be randomized – scattered throughout the questionnaire

11. Measurement of reliability • Cronback alpha: at least 0.7. • If below 0.7 you need to eliminate or make changes to low reliability questions.

12. Questionnaire design: closed questions • Seek a predefined response: Yes/No; True/False, etc. • Easy to code and analyse. • Make group comparisons easy. • Low cost, but… • May restrict richness of responses.

13. Questionnaire design: open questions • How, why, what …? • Good for eliciting rich responses, but… • Harder to analyse. • Example: You have indicated a loyalty to Krispy Crisps – please explain why ------------------------------------------

14. Questions to avoid (threats to validity) • Leading: Why do you like Krispy Crisps? • Double: Do you like Krispy Crisps or Walkers Crisps? YES/NO • Assumptive: How often do you eat Krispy Crisps? • Hypothetical: Suppose you were asked to eat 20 packets of Krispy Crisps…? • Knowledge based: Recalling the recent Krispy Crisp advertising campaign…

15. Good (valid) questions are… • Simple and easily understood. • As short as possible. • Unambiguous. • Not likely to offend. • Provided with categories such as ‘Don’t know’ and ‘Not applicable’.

16. What’s wrong here? • What’s your view on crisps? • State your age • Without effective ‘best practice’ crisp making cannot prosper. • How many packets of crisps have you stolen? • COMPLETE AND RETURN THIS FORM Under 20 20 - 25 25 - 30 Over 30

17. Response categories (1) List question What do you think is the most important influence on the success of theorganization in the next two years?Please as many responses as you think accurate.

18. Response categories (2) Category question How often in an average week do you use our e-banking facilities? Please  one response.

19. Response categories (3) Ranking question Please indicate in the boxes provided which features you believe arethe most important when visiting our superstore(1 indicating the most important, 2 the next most important, etc.) .Please leave blank those features that have no importance at all.

20. General Instructions Title of survey This survey is being undertaken by [your name] as part of [name of course] at the University of Surrey to [state purpose]. It will take approximately x minutes to complete. All information provided is completely confidential. Thank you for providing your comments. Please return to:………………by………

21. Specific instructions: go to 12 Do you eat Krispy Crisps?  No Go to 18 Yes 13 How many packets per week?

22. Pilot the questionnaire Through piloting you may decide to: • Change the wording of individual questions. • Add/eliminate some questions. • Amend the instructions. • Decide not to use the questionnaire!

23. Summary • Designing individual questions involves a rigorous process of analysis to avoid ambiguity, leading questions, double questions and simply misleading questions. • Questions must be clearly linked to the purpose of the research • Questionnaires should start with questions that are easy to answer, interesting and transparently linked to the purpose of the research. • Questionnaire layout and the use of typography can make a questionnaire easier to complete and more appealing to respondents, enhancing the response rate. • Clear, well set out instructions on completing the questionnaire can also boost the response rate. • Web and email questionnaires offer a new and potentially powerful tool, but also require additional design skills. • All questionnaires, whether paper-based, email or Web-based, require thorough piloting which will include evaluation of accompanying documentation, instructions, individual questions, types of question, question sequencing, the use of scales and skip instructions – basically, everything!