– Questionnaire is the list of question for collection of data from respondents (sample).
General issues in designing questionnaire:-
a) Formulate the precise question (so that answering will be easy)
b) Order of question (general to specific and simple to complex)
c) List the categories of questions (like general household characteristics, crop production, livestock production, etc)
d) Insert the data processing requirement and instruments (provide guidelines to the enumerator so that valid information will be collected which also meet the validation, processing and analysis requirements)
Problems in asking the questionnaire
a) Length of questionnaire (respondent may not have sufficient time to answer)
b) Complexity of questions (respondent may not understand the question)
c) Sensitiveness (highly sensitive and personal/secrete issues)
d) Hypothetical (responding to hypothetical questions will be difficult to the respondent)
e) Threatening (enumerator may treat/influence the respondent so as to obtain desired response)
f) Leading (enumerator may lead the respondent so that he/she may not say what is actually what to say)
Designing the questionnaire
There are nine steps involved in the development of a questionnaire:
- Decide the information required
- Define the target respondents
- Choose the method(s) of reaching your target respondents
- Decide on question content:- Opening questions that are easy to answer
- Develop the question wording:- closed-ended, open-ended and
open response-option questions.
- Sequencing the question (putting in logical order):- Put difficult question at the end.
- Check the length of the questionnaire:- In a rural situation an interview should not last longer than 1 hour
- Pre-testing the questionnaire:- Whether the questions as they are worded will achieve the desired results
- Develop the final survey form (questionnaire):- Finalize the questionnaire after pre-testing
