Questionnaire and its Construction

Interview schedule or the self-administered questionnaires are probably the most important and commonly used research instruments for data collection. Construction of these tools thus occupies a central position in any scientific investigation. Before we discuss this issue, we distinguish between a questionnaire and a schedule.


Questionnaire: A questionnaire is an instrument that is generally mailed or handed over to the respondent and filled in by term with no help from the interviewer or any other person.

Schedule: A schedule also known as an interview schedule, is an instrument that is not given to the respondents but is filled in by interviewer himself who reads the questions to the respondents and records the answers as provided by the respondents.

Before elaborating the steps involved in designing a questionnaire, we need to know the types of questions used in questionnaire. Depending on how questions are asked and recorded, we can distinguish two types of questions: Open-ended questions and closed questions. A question that is formulated without pre-determined response is an open-ended question. An open-ended question permits free response that should be recorded in the respondents own words. Here the respondents are not provided with any possible answer to choose from. Such questions are useful to obtain information on:

• Facts with the researcher is not very familiar or difficult to recollect;

• Opinion, attitude and suggestions of informants etc;

• Sensitive issues

A closed question on the other hand, offers a list of possible options or answers with alternatives, from which the respondents must choose. Closed questions are useful if the range of possible responses is known. In practice, a questionnaire usually has a combination of open-ended and closed, arranged in such a way that the discussion follows as naturally as possible. Data processing is much easier in terms of time and resources when the interview schedule is structured and closed.

Open-ended question may provided valuable new insight into the problem relating to the issues not previously thought of at the planning stage. Closed questions, on the other hand, have the advantages of providing quick answer. The analysis is also easier with the closed question.

The most important disadvantages of open-ended question is that it may lead to distorted information when the interviewers are unskilled. Analysis is also time consuming with such question. Closed question are unsuitable for face-to-face interview. Options provided in the questionnaire may lead to bias and some important information may be missed if it is not asked.

In practice, a questionnaire usually has a combination of open-ended and closed questions, arranged in such way that the discussion follows as naturally as possible. For open-ended questions, multiple responses is usually allowed. The interviewers in such cases will not be in a hurry to skip to the next question. He should be trained to wait for additional answer that the respondent may provide. For closed question too, the interviewer must choose to tick the most appropriate answer(s).

A question may again be either pre-coded or post-coded. A pre-coded scheme may be followed for closed questions such s for sex. Thus, you may designates the male by a numerical code “1” and the female by “2”. You may do the other way round ‘1” for female and “2” for male, but the former is the most common practice.

When possible answers cannot be exactly comprehended in pre-coding scheme, the question is kept open and after getting the responses from the field, the answer are arranged in logical order and then numerical codes are assigned to each selected response.