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Designing Effective Questions and Questionnaires

13 October, 2015 - 09:31

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Identify the steps one should take in order to write effective survey questions.
  2. Describe some of the ways that survey questions might confuse respondents and how to overcome that possibility.
  3. Recite the two response option guidelines when writing closed-ended questions.
  4. Define fence-sitting and floating.
  5. Describe the steps involved in constructing a well-designed questionnaire.
  6. Discuss why pretesting is important.

To this point we’ve considered several general points about surveys including when to use them, some of their pros and cons, and how often and in what ways to administer surveys. In this section we’ll get more specific and take a look at how to pose understandable questions that will yield useable data and how to present those questions on your questionnaire.