Questionnaire

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Questionnaire Form DesignHypothesis Development

• Week 10

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Study Materials for Module 8

• Cavana - Ch 10 pp. 227-38
• Ch 4 pp. 98 -103
• Appendix 1 pp. 414-15 (Bus Trsm)
• Jennings - Ch 8 pp. 244- 47
• Ch 9 pp. 299 - 301
• Coakes and Steed Ch 19 Chi square test for
  independence and relatedness, Mann-Whitney test
  and t-tests

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Lecture overview

• Place and function of questionnaires
• Questionnaire design process
• Hypothesis testing
• Ethics
• Summary
• Tutorial program

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Place of questionnaire design in the research
process
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Functions of Questionnaires

• clear comprehension of the questions
• co-operation to trust that the answers will be
  treated confidentially
• stimulate responses
• give clear instructions
• classify verify the interview

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Questionnaire design process

• Step 1 Determine data to be sought and from
  whom
• Step 2 Determine interviewing process and
  length of questionnaire
• Step 3 Prepare draft questionnaire
• Step 4 Pretest, revise, prepare final draft

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Step 1 Determine the specific data to be sought
and from whom

• Research objectives
• Think ahead to sampling
• Think ahead to data analysis

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Link between stage of the research process Stage
2 questionnaire
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Step 2 Determine the Interviewing Process

• Types
• Personal
• Interviewer Administered
• Self Administered
• Telephone
• Mail
• Internet
• Length of interview

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Step 3 Prepare draft questionnaire
Types of questions

• Question / Response Format (open or closed /
  unstructured or structured)
• Open Ended
• Advantages Disadvantages
• Free Response - interviewer bias high
• Probing - coding
• Good First Question
• Techniques
• Projective Techniques
• Association Techniques
• Construction Techniques
• Completion Techniques

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Some open ended questions

• At which Toowoomba Department store do you
  usually shop? ____________
• Why did you fly to Sydney on Virgin Airlines?
  ____________________
• When you flew to Sydney, what caused you to
  choose Virgin? __________

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Step 3 prepare draft questionnaire

• Closed Ended
• Dichotomous
• Ranking
• Check-list
• Multiple Choice - order bias
• Scales (rating)
• Advantages Disadvantages
• coding - interviewer bias lower
• ease of answering
• Should consider using both.

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Some close ended questions

• In which section of the aircraft did you sit?
• First class Business class Coach
• Did you make any long distance calls in the last
  7 days? Yes No
• How satisfied are you with your community? Would
  you say you are
• Very satisfied
• Somewhat satisfied
• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
• Somewhat dissatisfied
• Very dissatisfied

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Some close ended questions

• Please check which of the following sources of
  information about investments you regularly use,
  if any.
• Personal advice
• Brokerage newsletter
• Investment advisory service(s)
• Reports on the internet
• None of these
• Others (please specify) __________

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Step 3 Draft questionnaire

• Avoid complexity use simple language
• Eg. When effluents from a paper mill can be
  drunk and exhaust from factory smokestacks can be
  breathed, then humankind will have done a good
  job in saving the environment Dont you agree
  that what we want is zero toxicity no
  effluents?
• Avoid leading and loaded questions
• Leading questions suggest or imply certain
  answers
• Eg. Do you think patriotic American should buy
  automobiles when that would put American labour
  out of work?

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Step 3 Draft questionnaire

• Loaded question suggest socially desirable
  answers or emotionally charged
• Eg. I feel incapable of handling myself in most
  social situations. Agree __ Disagree ___
• Avoid ambiguity
• Eg. Fairly often, occasionally, fairly poor etc.
• Avoid double-barrelled questions
• Eg. Have you called in sick or left work in the
  morning in the last 7 days?

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Step 3 Draft questionnaire

• Avoid making assumptions
• Should Myers continue its excellent gift
  wrapping service?
• Avoid questions that tax memory
• Eg. Do you recall how you earned before tax in
  your previous job?

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Step 3 Prepare draft questionnaire
Sequencing

• Questionnaire Structure - The Flower Pot
  Approach
• Screens first question asked
• Used to select desired respondents
• Eg. Have you shopped at the Gap in the past
  month?
• Warm-ups immediately after any screens
• Easy to answer and complete and interesting
• Eg. How often do you go shopping in a week?

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Step 3 Prepare draft questionnaire
Sequencing

• Transitions prior to major sections of question
  or question format change
• Notifies respondent of subject changes
• Eg. Now, for the next questions I would Like to
  ask you about your familys shopping habits
• Complicated and difficult to answer questions -
  middle of the questionnaire
• Shows that respondent is nearing the end
• Eg. Rate each of the following stores on the
  friendliness of their sales people on a scale of
  1 to 7

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Step 3 Prepare draft questionnaire
Sequencing

• Demographic questions - last section
• Personal and/or offensive questions
• Eg. What was your age on your last birthday?

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Step 3 Draft questionnaire

• Physical characteristics of the form
• Appearance
• Layout
• Spacing
• Length
• Colour
• Title
• Covering Letter

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Step 4 Pre-test, Revise Final Draft

• Test on 3 groups of people
• small sample of respondents from the same
  population
• Usually 15 to 30 if homogeneous, depends on
  sample type.
• Personal interviews proposed admin method
• peers/colleagues
• potential users of data/clients

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Pre-test, revise final draft cont

• Revise and make changes if necessary.
• Pre-test again. If OK go to point 4, if not go
  back to point 2.
• Administer questionnaire.

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Hypothesis testing

• Hypothesis an unproven statement made by the
  researcher based on secondary data and
  exploratory research
• A statement about the relationship between two or
  more variables
• Variables are either dependant or independent
• Independent variable influences dependant
  variable
• Dependent variable is influenced by independent
  variable
• Eg. Major studied (dependent variable) is
  influenced by students nationality (independent
  variable)

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Hypothesis testing procedure

• Directional versus non-directional hypotheses
• Directional hypotheses uses terms such as
  positive, negative gt or lt.
• Eg. Male students at USQ more strongly agree than
  female students that USQs recreation facilities
  are excellent (ve)
• Eg. The greater the number of years that students
  study at USQ, the lower they rate its
  recreational facilities
• (ve).
• Non-directional hypotheses states a
  relationship with no direction.
• Eg. There is a relationship between age and
  rating of USQ recreation facilities.

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Hypothesis testing procedure

• Two types of hypotheses
• Null hypothesis (H0) no difference between
  groups or population correlation is zero ?any
  change is due to random error
• Alternative hypothesis (H1) indicates the
  opposite
• Eg. H0 There is no relationship between
  nationality and major studied
• H1 There is a relationship between nationality
  and major studied
• Only state the alternative hypothesis in
  assignment

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Hypothesis testing procedure

• Use decision rule to judge whether null or
  alternative hypothesis is accepted
• Decision rule base on confidence interval (CI)
• CI is the probability we associate with an
  interval estimate
• Basically indicates how confident we are that the
  interval estimate will include parameter
• Confidence intervals usually include 90, 95 or
  99
• We use 95 - industry norm

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Ethics

• Informed consent
• Confidentiality and privacy
• Data security and storage
• Procedures used (eg. May be invasive, cause
  distress, deceive, involve drug use)
• Withdrawal from project

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Report Writing

• When submitting a report an exact copy of the
  questionnaire and any ancillary letters card or
  examples need to included in the appendices.

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Next Topic

• Causal or experimental research
• Guest Speaker from 9-10

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Summary

• In todays lecture we covered
• the function of questionnaires
• the place of questionnaires in the research
  process
• the questionnaire design process (question type,
  wording, sequencing)
• pretesting (when, who and how many)
• hypothesis testing (dependent and independent
  variables null and alternative hypotheses and
  directional and non-directional) and
• Ethics.

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Tutorial

• Presentation
• Questionnaire critiquing
• SPSS Ch 19
• Chi square test for independence and relatedness,
  
• Mann-Whitney test
• T-tests