Question and Questionnaire Design Essay

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Introduction. Cognitive Process and Question Types

  • Four steps: interpretation, information, judgment, response
  • Optimizing behavior: self-expression, self-understanding, altruism, challenge
  • Weak and strong satisficing: arbitral, irrelevant
  • Satisficing factors: task difficulty, respondent ability, motivation
  • Open questions: rich in meaning, time-consuming
  • Closed questions: comprehensive, less reliable

Rating Scale and Its Length

  • Scale length affects validity, reliability, clarity, satisficing
  • Dichotomous scale: clear in meaning and inconsistent
  • Trichotomous scale: clear and not accurate
  • Long scales (101-points): incomprehensible, prone to errors
  • Midpoints lower motivation, improve reliability
  • “7-point scales are optimal in many instances” Krosnick & Presser (2009, p. 283)

Labeling and Order Response

  • Verbal labeling increases respondent’s satisfaction and reliability
  • “Yes/no” questions: practical, promote “acquiescence” Krosnick & Presser (2009, p. 21)
  • Acquiescence reasons: fatigue, politeness, personal characteristics
  • Possible approaches: adjust/exclude answers, “item reversal”
  • Primacy effects: attributable to “weak satisficing”, verbal
  • Recency effects: attributable to short-memory, oral

No-Opinion Answers

  • +“Don’t know” answers help not to appear uninformed
  • + the lack of necessary information and experience
  • +/-Help to escape socially undesirable images
  • -DK options prevent generation of meaningful answers
  • -Do not increase reliability and validity of the survey
  • -Encourage satisficing by providing shortcuts

Response Bias

Reasons: favorable image, reduce punishment, increase rewards

Possible spheres: racial prejudice, political views

Ways of counteraction:

  • “Bogus pipeline technique”
  • “Randomized response”
  • “Item count method” Krosnick and Presser (2009, p. 301)
  • Anonymity: self-administered questionnaire, web surveys

Error Sources

Main sources: “comprehension” and “frailties of memory” Krosnick and Presser (2009, p. 305)

Possible ways to avoid errors:

  • Interviewer’s instructions to the respondent
  • Long, redundant phrases and sentences
  • Explicit instructions about the importance of survey
  • Simplified tasks and wording of items, decomposition

Question Order

  • The main aim is to minimize errors
  • Question order major types: serial, semantic
  • Serial order affects: motivation, fatigue, learning
  • Semantic order affects: coherency, logic
  • “Funnel” order (general and specific items) Krosnick and Presser (2009, p. 313)
  • Reasons for specific order: context, survey focus

Questionnaires Evaluation

Methods without data collection:

  • Expert review (critiques of the questionnaire)
  • The Questionnaire Appraisal System
  • The Question Understanding Aid

Methods with data collection:

  • Behavior coding
  • Response latency

Reference

Krosnick J.A., & Presser S. (2009). Question and questionnaire design. In J.D. Wright & P.V. Marsden (Eds.), Handbook of survey research (pp. 263-314). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.

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IvyPanda. (2023, May 7). Question and Questionnaire Design. https://ivypanda.com/essays/question-and-questionnaire-design/

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IvyPanda. 2023. "Question and Questionnaire Design." May 7, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/question-and-questionnaire-design/.

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