Category: Survey design. These pages discuss how to design a questionnaire or survey. Articles are arranged by date with the most recent entries at the top. You can find the theme and closely related categories and other resources at the bottom of this page.

Stats: Real-life examples of survey mistakes (January 31, 2006). Tzippy Shocat was nice enough to forward a link to an article that she wrote for the iSixSigma website (www.isixsigma.com), titled "Tips for Getting the Most from Six Sigma Surveys." There were some amusing examples of bad survey practices that she cites.

Stats: Open-ended questions on a survey (March 25, 2005). No one seems to talk about how to handle those pesky open-ended questions you see on a survey. I usually hold my breath and hope that the researcher doesn't think to mention it. Alicia O'Cathain and Kate Thomas address this important issue in a recently published article and they gently scold us for ignoring an important source of information.

Stats: Designing a questionnaire (December 24, 2004). I'm behind in my reading of the British Medical Journal, and the first issue I looked at today has a gem of an article, Selecting, designing, and developing your questionnaire. Boynton PM, Greenhalgh T. Bmj 2004: 328(7451); 1312-5. Questionnaire development is something that many researchers do, but few researchers do well. Here's a quick summary of the questions this paper raises.

Stats: So you want to write a questionnaire (July 12, 2002). Dear Professor Mean, I need to write a questionnaire for a research study I am conducting. Can you help me write it? -- Cautious Carmen

Theme and closely related categories:

• Theme: Planning a research study
• Category: Qualitative data

Other resources:

• A Brief Guide to Questionnaire Development. Excerpt: Most people have responded to so many questionnaires in their lives that they have little concern when it becomes necessary to construct one of their own. Unfortunately the results are often unsatisfactory. These problems are sufficiently prevalent that numerous books and journal articles have been written addressing them (e.g., see Dillman, 1978). Also, various educational and proprietary organizations regularly offer workshops in questionnaire development. Therefore, the brief exposition that follows is intended only to identify some of the more prevalent problems in questionnaire development and to suggest ways of avoiding them. This paper does not cover the development of inventories designed to measure psychological constructs, which would require a deeper discussion of psychometric theory than is feasible here. Instead, the focus will be on questionnaires designed to collect factual information and opinions.
• Comparative response to a survey executed by post, email, & web form. Description: This article studies a data collection approach that used postal mail, e-mail, and a web-based form. Each method tended to solicit a different group of respondents. The authors conclude that using multiple methods to collect data will provide a more representative sample.
• Yes, Polling Works. Excerpt: There's little question that some Americans are skeptical of polls and the process by which we use small samples to represent the views of millions of people. We pick up that skepticism when we poll people about polls (something we do from time to time!), and I certainly hear it when I am on a radio talk show or make a speech and get bombarded with questions about the believability of our polls, which are based on what seems to the questioners to be ridiculously small numbers of people.

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This webpage was written by Steve Simon on 2007-09-12, edited by Steve Simon, and was last modified on 2008-07-08. Send feedback to ssimon at cmh dot edu or click on the email link at the top of the page.