Week 3: Designing a questionnaire

Decided on a subject area

Performed a literature search

Started to think about your research question and hypotheses

This week: Designing a questionnaire to test your hypotheses.

Sampling

Consent

Question types

Answer types

Questionnaire design

Coding

Who to ask: your target population

How many people: 20 (5 per group member)

Avoid a biased sample, e.g. if asking about drinking behaviour in men and women:◦ Don’t just ask women

◦ Don’t just ask people in a bar

◦ Don’t just ask tee-totallers

You must adhere to a strict code of ethics in your research:

http://www.bps.org.uk/the-society/code-of-conduct/

Participants must:◦ give consent to take part

◦ not be coerced into participating

◦ be free to withdraw at any time

Administering your questionnaires already has ethics approval.

Participants create their own answers

◦ “What is your age?”

◦ “Are you a smoker?”

◦ “What are your favourite TV programmes?”

◦ “How much do you like biscuits?”

To make data analysis easier DO NOT use open-ended questions that allow participants to write long responses

Experimenter provides participants with options

◦ Choice of category:-Are you a smoker? Never smoked / Current smoker / Ex-smoker

◦ Likert scale: - How strongly do you agree with the statement “I like biscuits”

1 2 3 4 5Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly

Agree

◦ Checklists: Circle the TV programmes that you watch

◦ Rating scales: How much do you like this drink, on a scale of 1-10?

◦ Ranking: Order these sports in terms of how much you like them

Open-Ended◦ Exploratory◦ Useful when you can’t cover all the possible

answers◦ Impractical in terms of analysis

Closed-Format◦ Easy and quick to fill in ◦ Doesn’t matter how literate or articulate you are◦ Easy to code, record, and analyse results

quantitatively ◦ Easy to report results

If the answer to the question is a number that represents an amount, e.g.◦ IQ score◦ Height◦ How long it takes to complete a jigsaw puzzle◦ Likert scale responses◦ Ranks

Top tip: Calculating a mean makes sense with continuous data (but not with categorical data)

Please give an approximation of the number of alcoholic drinks you normally consume on a Saturday night: … Drinks.

Please indicate your agreement with the following statement:◦ I feel that I should drink less on a Saturday night □ □ □ □ □

1 2 3 4 5Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree StronglyDisagree Agree

If the answer to the question is:◦ a word

“Yes”◦ a sentence

“I think that biscuits are tasty”◦ a description

“Physics student”◦ a code that represents a category

1 = undergraduate, 2 = postgraduate

NB: Numerical codes can be used to represent categorical responses BUT this does not transform categorical data into continuous data.

In which town were you born? …….

Please indicate your gender:□ Male □ Female

Which actor is the hunkiest?□ Brad Pitt□ Johnny Depp□ Orlando Bloom

“Please indicate your age:”◦ Continuous: … Years◦ Categorical : □ 18-25 □ 26-30 □ 31–35 □ 36–40 etc.◦ Categorical : ... Years □ Older than 60 Years

“How many days a week do you usually exercise?”◦ Continuous : … days◦ Continuous :

□ 1 day □ 2 days □ 3 days □ 4 days □ 5 days □ 6 days □ 7 days

◦ Categorical : □ 1 day □ 2 days □ 3 days □ 4 days □ 5 days or more

This can be applied to a number of data

Keep it short and simple

Start with an introduction/ welcome message

Allow not applicable responses to all possibly relevant questions

Say thank you to your participants

Go from general to particular

Go from easy to difficult

Go from factual to abstract

Do not start with demographic and personal questions (put these at the end)

Start with a title Assure anonymity

◦ Assign each questionnaire a number instead of asking for names

Avoid personal and sensitive questions Be aware that you may bias answers simply

by being there Try to avoid biased wording

◦ e.g. “Would you agree that the death penalty is a bad idea?”

Giving numbers to categories in categorical data is called coding◦ e.g. “Yes” becomes 1 and “No” becomes 2

Codes can be allocated either before the question is answered (pre-coding) or afterwards (post-coding)

You should agree on codes with the rest of your group before you enter any data

We will come back to this in Week 5

Think about your sample Create your questionnaire Pre-test the questionnaire (if practical) Conduct interviews

Enter data Analyse the data

Write your research proposal Write your lab report

2 Categorical Hypotheses: - ◦ Should be tested with 2 categorical questions

◦ e.g. “Men prefer to buy fast food at Burger King, while women prefer to buy fast food at

McDonalds”

2 Continuous Hypotheses: - ◦ Should be tested with a categorical question and

a continuous question

◦ e.g. “Males consume a larger quantity of alcoholic beverages per week than females”

Put together your group questionnaire◦ 10 questions in total◦ 5 Categorical questions◦ 5 Continuous questions

Try to consider your hypotheses while creating the questions

Get a tutor to check it over

Try to have asked 20 people to fill out your questionnaire

Top tip: If psychology students are a suitable sample, swap questionnaires with each other