The key to success of your research depends on the quality of questionnaire. Hence, designing a good questionnaire comes as an important requirement while conducting a research study.
However, many critical points should be kept in mind while designing a reliable and valid questionnaire. Let’s discuss a few basic points for the same:
Decide on the information requirements: Designing an up-do-date questionnaire is a challenge. However, it becomes easy if you know about the information that is required from respondents. Hence, it is pre-requirement to check the type of information needed to fulfil the study objectives. Accordingly, you can develop the right questions that could fetch you the required details.
Define target respondents: It is also important to define your target respondents and to pave ways to reach them. These respondents comprise a class from whom the required information has to be collected. Review some basic factors while deciding about your target population. You should also decide on different methods to reach your respondents.
Decide about the content of questions: You have to be extra smart in choosing words and content while designing your questionnaire. You should include content that supplies information to test your study’s hypotheses. The wording of your questions should be such that it makes it easier for a respondent to answer them. It should bring in clarity without any articulation and should be written in a way so that it is easier to analyse the collected data.
Meaningfully order and format questions: You should start with questions that make your respondents feel comfortable. Then, you can place them in an increasing order of difficulty. The questions related to specific aspects can be grouped together to make it easier for respondents to answer them.
Right questionnaire act as a right tool
The questionnaire should include a variable category which is often measured in survey research. This is demographic variable, which is used to depict the characteristics of the people surveyed in the sample.
Demographic variables generally include measures such as ethnicity, socio-economic status, race, and age and hence they need to be kept in mind while designing the questionnaire.
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