Our company undertakes a large amount of questionnaires to obtain feedback from both users of our services and their employers.
Feedback suggestes our current questionnaires could be better designed.
Does anyone have any pointers on questionnaire design and structure, or recommendations of reading or training available?
Gareth Pugh
2 Responses
There is a really fantastic book …
called “Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement” which will give you all you need to know. It covers the underpinning theory as well as having some good worked examples and the formula for working out validity.
Its content is:
1. Problems of Survey Design
2. Problems of Questionnaire Design
3. Question wording
4. Checklists, Rating scales and inventories
5. Attitude Statements
6. Attitude Scaling Methods
7. Projective Techniques in Attitude Study
8. Miscellaneous Techniques
9. The Quantification of Questionnaire Data
I delve into my copy a lot, both for questionnaire and competency design. In the past though, I have found it really difficult to get hold of an additional copy, so you may need to be both persistent and creative in your search for one.
I think that it is a great shame that it is not more widely available because (even though it is an old text) it is the most comprehensive and readable guide I have ever found, and even more use now that valid measurement is becoming much more of a fundamental skill in all parts of an organisation.
Its details (from my copy) are:
“Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement”
Author: A.N. Oppenheim
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, Charles Street London
ISBN: 0 435 82676 X
It was, at some stage, an Open University set book, so that may also be a good place to start.
Another book I have found with some useful bits in (though rather American) is:
“Measure Up”
Author: Richard L Lynch & Kelving F Cross
Publisher: Mandarin Paperbacks, Fulham Rd London
ISBN: 0 7493 1342 0
Best of luck!
Questionnaire design
Try http://www.hud.ac.uk/scom/mappit/model2/support/gn81.htm