Questionnaires play an essential role in research. They allow us to gather data that can reveal hidden information about people. But they do have 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 provide a host of advantages, including broader reach than traditional telephone or mail-based surveys and the capability to reach a wider audience. They can also present some difficulties, including the difficulty of reaching a representative sample of the population. Additionally, they are subject to issues such as screen size as well as operating system, hardware platform, and browser settings that could affect the response.
When designing a questionnaire, it is essential to consider the research goals and the goals. When creating questions, it’s crucial to know the target audience. For instance you should know whether they can comprehend and respond to the question or whether they have time to finish a lengthy questionnaire.
It is also crucial to test new questionnaires prior to their release through qualitative methods like focus groups, cognitive interviews, or pretesting (often with an opt-in survey) to ensure they are working according to their intended purpose. Questionnaires are susceptible to “question-order effects” where the answers to earlier questions may influence the answers to later ones.