Introduction to Questionnaire Design

Abstract

A well-designed and tested survey questionnaire is one of the most powerful tools that researchers in education, health, business and public policy, and the social sciences have to obtain accurate and reliable measurements of a wide range of attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and behaviors. With technological advances in how data are captured, exciting new horizons for survey measurement and assessment of the quality of those measurements are emerging. In this workshop, we review best practices in the development and testing of survey questionnaires that may be administered using web, mail, telephone and/or face-to-face data collection methods. We will provide numerous practical examples of how to design and evaluate survey questions and how to implement commonly used testing procedures, including in-depth cognitive interviews and field pretests.