Steps involved In Designing a Questionnaire

Once the decision has been made to use a particular technique, the following questions should be considered before designing the questionnaire.

(a) What exactly do we want to measure according to the objectives formulated and variables identified?
(b) Of whom will we ask questions and what techniques will we follow?
(c) Are the respondents mainly illiterate?
(d) How large is the sample that will be interviewed?

The above questions are raised to ensure that the contents of the questionnaire are relevant to the
(i) goals of the study and (ii) individual respondents.

In a sample survey, it is customary to employ structured interview rather than unstructured ones, since the former lend themselves better to quantitative analysis and the latter create serious data processing difficulties, particularly if the sample is large. A large interview is one that employs a standard questionnaire (or interview schedule) to ensure that all respondents are asked exactly the same set of questions in the same sequence. The exact wording of each question to the respondent. This is also true for survey when information are sought by mail questionnaire.

The questioning of persons is an imposition and invasion of privacy, so it should not be surprising that some persons do not respond as we expect. In dealing with this problem, there are several problems to remember with respect to the designing and wording of the questions. We discuss below a few of these points.

(a) Use simple language
(b) Start with an interesting and easy question
(c) Use short language
(d) Avoid double-barrel questions
(e) Avoid ambiguous wording of questions
(f) Avoid leading questions
(g) Avoid questions with vague words
(h) Avoid presuming questions
(i) Avoid hypothetical questions
(j) V questions that involve memory
(k) Avoid sensitive or embarrassing questions
(l) Maintain sequencing of the questions