Questionnaires play a crucial role in research. They enable us to collect data which can reveal the hidden truth about individuals. However, they aren’t without their limitations.
Questions can be self-administered, with participants answering all questions themselves, or researcher-administered, where the research team interviews a sample of respondents by phone, in-person, or online. Self-administered questionnaires tend to have lower response rates than researcher-administered questionnaires, due in part to the impersonal nature of mailed paper surveys and automated telephone menu systems.
Web-based questionnaires have a variety of advantages, including the ability to reach a wider audience than traditional phone or mail-based surveys and the ability to include a global audience. However, they also come with challenges, including the difficulty of reaching a representative demographic sample. They are also affected by factors such as screen dimensions as well as hardware platforms, operating systems, and browser settings.
When designing a questionnaire, it is important to consider the research goals and objectives. It’s also important to consider the people who will be answering your questions, such as whether they are able to comprehend and answer the language you use, or if they have time to complete a lengthy questionnaire.
To ensure that the new questionnaires work as they are intended, it is important to test them prior to use using qualitative methods, such as focus groups, cognitive interviews, or pretesting. Questionnaires are prone to «question-order effects», where answers to questions from earlier ones can influence the answers to later ones.