Questionnaires

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Social Processes: Methodology · Types of test

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A questionnaire (also known as self-administered survey) is a type of statistical survey handed out usually to a specific demographic to gather information in order to provide better service or goods. The questionnaire was invented by Sir Francis Galton.

Questionnaires have advantages over some other types of surveys in that they are cheap, do not require as much effort from the questioner as verbal or telephone surveys, and often have standardized answers that make it simple to compile data. However, such standardized answers may frustrate users. Questionnaires are also sharply limited by the fact that respondents must be able to read the questions and respond to them. Thus, for some demographic groups conducting a survey by questionnaire may not be practical.

As a type of survey, questionnaires also have many of the same problems relating to question construction and wording that exist in other types of opinion polls.

See also

• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
• Course evaluation
• Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI)
• Customer survey
• General Health Questionnaire
• Mail surveys
• Online questionnaires
• Quantitative marketing research
• Questionnaire construction
• Structured interviewing
• Telephone surveys
• Web experiment list

Key texts

Papers

• Reason,J. (1995) Self-report questionnaires in cognitive psychology: have they delivered the goods? in Attention: Selection, Awareness, and Control (Eds.) Alan Baddeley & Lawrence Weiskrantz

Additional material

Papers

• Google Scholar

External links

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Wiktionary: Questionnaires

• The Question Bank
• Harmonised questions from the UK Office for National Statistics
• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
• UK Market Research Society[1]
• Hints for Designing Effective Questionnaires - from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation.