Lecture-9

Collecting Primary data using Questionnaires

What is a Questionnaire?
Questionnaire is a general term to include all techniques of data collection in which each person is asked to respond to the same set of questions in a predetermined order. (Oppenheim 2000)

Design of a questionnaire will affect the response rate, reliability and validity of the data you collect. Response rates, validity and reliability can be maximised by: careful design of individual questions Clear and attractive layout of the questionnaire good explanation of the purpose of the questionnaire pilot testing carefully planned and executed administration

Overview of Questionnaire techniques

When to use Questionnaire
Many people use questionnaire to collect data without considering other methods such examination of secondary sources, observation or unstructured/ semi-structured interviews You should choose the one that is most appropriate to your research objectives and questions Questionnaires are not particularly good for exploratory or other research that requires large number of open-ended questions Instead they work best for standardized set of questions that are interpreted by all respondents in the same way Questionnaires may be used in a multi-method research design where other technique such as interviews may be used along with.

Types of Questionnaire
Self-administered Interviewer

questionnaires (usually completed by respondents)

respondents answers)

administered (recorded by the interviewer on the basis of

The Choice of Questionnaire

A variety of factors which are related to your research question(s) and objective(s) will affect the choice of your questionnaire: characteristics of the respondents from whom you wish to collect data importance of reaching a particular person as respondent importance of respondents answers not being contaminated or distorted size of sample you require for your analysis, taking into account the likely response rate types of question you need to ask to collect your data number of questions you need to ask to collect your data.

Your choice of questionnaire will also be affected by the resources you have available are particularly, time available to complete the data collection financial implications of data collection and entry availability of interviewers and field workers to assist ease of automating data entry

Deciding what data need to be collected

Research design requirements
Unlike in-depth and semi-structured interviews, the questions you ask in questionnaires need to be defined precisely prior to data collection Questionnaires offers only one chance to collect the data

For most business and management researches, the data collected using questionnaires will be used for either descriptive or explanatory purposes
Explanatory research requires data to test a theory or theories. Therefore, to define theories as we wish to test relationship between variables prior to designing questionnaire. These variables are classified as: Dependent variable, Independent variable and Extraneous variable (an alternative explanation to your independent variable)

Types of Variables
Dillman (2007) distinguishes between three types of data variables that can be collected through questionnaire. Opinion variables ( they record how respondents feel about something or their belief as something true/false) Behavioural variables ( contain data on what people /their organization did did in the past) Attribute variables (contain data about the respondents characteristics. They are used to explore how opinions and and behaviour differ between respondents as well as to check that data collected are representative of of total population)

Ensuring that essential data are collected

Although no data collection method is infallible, one way is to create a data requirements table.

Research question/ objective: Type of Research:

Investigative questions Variable(s) required Detail in which data measured Check measurement question included in questionnaire

The six step process which causes outcome of this data requirement table (as defined previously in the slide) is as follows:

1. Decide whether the main outcome of your research is descriptive or explanatory 2. Sub-divide each research question or objective into more specific investigative questions 3. Repeat the second stage investigative questions are not sufficiently precise 4. Identify the variables about which you will need to collect data to answer each investigative question 5. Establish the level of detail required from the data fro each variable 6. Develop measurement questions to capture the data at the level of data required to each variable.

* Investigative questions are the questions that you need to answer in order to address satisfactorily each research question and to meet each objective.

Designing the questionnaire

A valid questionnaire will enable accurate data to be collected, and one that is reliable will mean that these data are collected consistently This means there are four stages that must occur if a question is to be valid and reliable 1. 2. 3. 4. Researcher is clear about the data required and designs a question Respondent decodes the question in the way the researcher intended Respondent answers the question Researcher decodes the answer in the way the respondent intended

Assessing Validity
Internal validity refers to the ability of your questionnaire to measure what you intend it to measure
Content validity refers to the extent to which the measurement device, in our case measurement questions provides adequate coverage of the investigative Questions Criterion-related validity/Predictive validity is concerned with the ability of the measures (questions) to make accurate predictions Construct validity refers to the extent to which your measurement questions actually measure the presence of those constructs you intended them to measure.

Testing reliability
Reliability refers to consistency
Mitchell (1996) outlines three common approaches to assessing reliability, in addition to comparing the data collected with other data from variety of sources. They are, Test re-test (estimates of reliability are obtained by correlating data collected with those from the same questionnaire collected under as near equivalent conditions as possible) Internal consistency (correlating the responses to each question in the questionnaire with those to other questions) Alternative form (comparing responses to alternative forms of the same question or groups of questions. These questions are referred to Check questions)

Designing individual questions Open questions List questions Category questions Ranking questions Rating questions Quantity questions