Psychology

Questionnaires

Introduction
Questionnaires are data gathering research tools that use pre-arranged questions to get information from participants in a research. In the absence of a standard format, a researcher has the discretion in the preparation of the questionnaire, which should be done in accordance of the research type and potential respondents. A conspicuous advantage of a questionnaire is its ease of interpretation.
Most statistical analysis software can analyse questionnaires, meaning that the questionnaires weakness may be in its ability to generate results reflective of the participants view. Consequently, the most important factor to consider in a questionnaire based research is its interaction with the respondents. Broadly two aspects must be covered with respect to this the ability of the audience to understand the questionnaire and the likelihood of the questionnaire extracting the right responses. These are areas covered in the preliminary stages because they concern aspects such as problem identification, sample size definition and questionnaire design. For that reason, a questionnaires success will be dependent on the effectiveness of the preparatory stages.
Preparing a questionnaire

Goal identification
The first step in designing a questionnaire is to identify the objective of the questionnaire. More often than not, a research will have more than one research instrument or questionnaire, with each of them covering specific concepts within the research. These are the areas that have to be identified by the researcher before embarking on the process of dealing with the questionnaire specifics. When the goals of a study can be expressed in a few clear and concise sentences, the design of the questionnaire becomes considerably easier. (Walonick,1993).  The goals being referred here are those of the questionnaire. Its objectives should be broken down in to deliverables, or put another way the questionnaire should at this point identify how the information gathered from it should be used.

Formulating of questions
Having identified the deliverables, it is time to break them down in to assessable units, which are the questions the respondents will be answering. Generally, a questionnaire can have closed or open ended questions. A researcher may choose one of the two or combine them. A close questionnaire restricts the answers a participants can give, something that proves to be its weak point because one may be forced to give an unintended answer for lack of an appropriate one (Williams, 2003). Their advantage lies in their ease of completion and subsequent coding. Open ended questions offers the participants the opportunity to express their own views without restrictions, but take longer to complete and are difficult to code. The first step is the identification of the type of questions to be used.

Once that is done, one now decides on the specific questions and their order in the questionnaire. It is important to make the questionnaire as attractive as possible because participants tend to form a first impression of the questionnaire from the first few questions. People generally look at the first few questions before deciding whether or not to complete the questionnaire (Walonick, 1993). To encourage participants, it is important that the first questions are not threatening and easy to answer, and in addition, personal or confidential questions should as much as possible be kept to the end of the questionnaire (Frary, 1996). However, a coherent flow of questions has to be maintained so that there is a smooth transition from one question to the next because a jumbled questionnaire is likely to elicit less response.

Apart from the ordering, it is important that questions formulated avoid certain attributes. One of them is formulating a question based on presumption (Williams, 2003). A typical example of such a question is How often do you eat fish Such a question assumes that the respondent eats fish, which may not always be the case. In fact, this has the potential risk of antagonizing some of the respondents. Such a question must be preceded by an appropriate question. In addition the questions must avoid suggestive or leading tone. These types of questions usually elicit some level of bias from the respondents.

Other questions to avoid include embarrassing questions that tend to weaken the respondents trust in the research process. Moreover, one needs to consider the questions wording so that the most appropriate language is used in their formulation, an example being an option of using child-like instead of childish (gatech, 2010). The questionnaire layout should be designed to meet two objectives easier data coding and elicit the interest of the participants. It must therefore have an attractive layout and in case it has too many questions, it should be divided into a number of sections to make for easier use (Williams, 2003).

Significance of using a questionnaire in my research
My research is about drinkers and non drinkers among university students. Students may be apprehensive about such a topic because it borders on personal character traits. For that reason, I would like a mode of information extraction that has minimal chances of creating a biased response based on the desire to keep a good public image. An interview may lead to some of the respondents giving answers they feel are most suitable for an ideal student for fear of antagonizing their character. In that respect, the questionnaire offers the opportunity of the participants answering questions in confidence and with assurance that none of the things they will reveal will be directly attributable to them because maximum privacy will be guaranteed in the questionnaire. I prefer to use closed questions for this research because my objective is not to come with a qualitative inference I want a quantitative measure. The best mode of administering the questionnaire would be a mode that allows easier coding and analysis of the results, which makes the closed questions the most appropriate.

Pilot study
It may sometimes be necessary to take the questionnaire through a pre-pilot and pilot project. The pre-pilot phase is designed to check the questionnaire in terms of ambiguity, page layout and acceptability of the questionnaire among other issues. This is not a formal procedure and may be done using friends or colleagues. The objective is to take the questionnaire through a stepwise refinement to ensure that the final questionnaire represent the best design possible.

The pilot stage of the questionnaire design is meant to test the acceptability, validity, and reliability of the results that will be obtained from the research. These are parameters that assess the credibility of the research. The pilot study is more of a formal process involving a population similar to the one that will be tested by the questionnaire. Without a pilot study, one may not be able to justify the credibility of the research carried out.

Conclusion
The most attention should be paid to the initial stages of designing the questionnaire. With technological advancements, decisions support systems such as SPSS have had their capabilities increased to the extent that they never go wrong in interpreting data that is derived from such researches. The emphasis should therefore be laid on the design and execution of the process so that the data obtained is valid.