Download questionnaire design

Zikmund & Babin
Essentials of Marketing Research – 5th Edition
CHAPTER 11 –
QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11–1
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
1. Know the key decisions in questionnaire design
2. Choose between open-ended and fixed-alternative
questions
3. Avoid common mistakes in questionnaire design
4. Minimize problems with order bias
5. Understand principles of survey flow
6. Use latest survey technology to reduce respondent
error
7. Appreciate the importance of pretesting survey
instruments
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11–2
Basic Considerations in Questionnaire
Design
• Questionnaire design is one of the most critical
stages in the survey research process.
 A questionnaire (survey) is only as good as the
questions it asks—ask a bad question, get bad
results.
 The questions must meet the basic criteria of
relevance and accuracy.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Decisions in Questionnaire Design
1. What should be asked?
2. How should each question be phrased?
3. In what sequence should the questions be
arranged?
4. What questionnaire layout will best serve the
research objectives?
5. How can the questionnaire encourage
complete responses?
6. How should the questionnaire be pretested
and then revised?
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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What Should Be Asked?
• Questionnaire Relevancy
 All information collected should address a research
question in helping the decision maker in solving the
current marketing problem.
• Questionnaire Accuracy
 The information is valid; it faithfully represents reality.
Questionnaires should use simple, understandable, unbiased,
unambiguous, and nonirritating words.
 Questionnaire design should facilitate recall and motivate
respondents to cooperate.
 Proper question wording and sequencing to avoid confusion
and biased answers.

© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Question Phrasing
• Open-ended Response Questions
 Pose some problem and ask respondents to answer
in their own words.
 Advantages:
Particularly beneficial in exploratory research, especially
when the range of responses is not known.
 Identify which words and phrases people spontaneously give.
 Valuable at the beginning of an interview.

 Disadvantages:
High cost of administering open-ended response questions.
 The possibility that interviewer bias will influence the answer.
 Bias introduced by articulate individuals’ longer answers.

© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11–6
Question Phrasing (cont’d)
• Fixed-alternative Questions
 Questions in which respondents are given specific,
limited-alternative responses and asked to choose the
one closest to their own viewpoint.
 Advantages:
Require less interviewer skill
 Take less time to answer
 Are easier for the respondent to answer
 Provides comparability of answers

 Disadvantages:
Researcher unaware of potential responses
 Tendency of respondents to choose more prestigious or
socially acceptable alternative

© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Types of Fixed-Alternative Questions
• Simple-dichotomy (dichotomous alternative) Question
 Requires the respondent to choose one of two alternatives (e.g.,
yes or no).
• Multiple-choice Question
 Requires the respondent to choose one response from among
multiple alternatives (e.g., A, B, or C).
• Frequency-determination Question
 Asks for an answer about general frequency of occurrence (e.g.,
often, occasionally, or never).
• Checklist Question
 Allows the respondent to provide multiple answers to a single
question by checking off items.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Phrasing Questions for Self-Administered,
Telephone, and Personal Interview Surveys
• Influences on Question Phrasing
 The means of data collection—telephone interview,
personal interview, self-administered questionnaire—
will influence the question format and question
phrasing.

Questions for mail, Internet, and telephone surveys must be
less complex than those used in personal interviews.

Questionnaires for telephone and personal interviews should
be written in a conversational style.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Guidelines For Avoiding Mistakes
• Simpler is better
• Avoid leading and loaded questions
 Loaded question – suggests a socially desirable
answer or is emotionally charged.
• Avoid ambiguity: Be as specific as possible
• Avoid double-barreled items
 Double-barreled question – may induce bias because
it covers two or more issues at once.
• Avoid making assumptions
• Avoid taxing respondent’s memory
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11–10
Order Bias
• Question Sequence
 Order bias
 Bias caused by the influence of earlier questions in a questionnaire
or by an answer’s position in a set of answers.
 Funnel technique
 Asking general questions before specific questions in order to obtain
unbiased responses.
• Randomized Presentations
 Used in electronic questionnaires, but rarely used in printed
questionnaires due to coding difficulties.
• Randomized Response Techniques
 Involve randomly assigning respondents to answer either the
question of interest (embarrassing) or a mundane and
unembarrassing question.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Survey Flow
• Survey flow
 The ordering of questions through a survey.
• Breakoff
 A respondent who stops answering questions before
reaching the end of the survey.
• Filter question
 A question that screens out respondents who are not
qualified to answer a second question.
• Branching
 Directing respondents to alternative portions of the
questionnaire based on their response to a filter
question.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Traditional Questionnaires
• Multiple-grid (matrix table) question
 Presents several similar questions of the same format
arranged in a grid format.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11–13
Survey Technology
• Physical Features
 Heat map question

A graphical question that tracks the parts of an image or
advertisement that most capture a respondent’s attention.
 Status Bar

A visual indicator that tells the respondent what portion of the
survey he or she has completed.
• Prompting
 Informs the respondent that he or she has skipped an
item or provided implausible information.
• Piping Software
 Allows question answers to be inserted into later
questions.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Pretesting and Revising Questionnaires
• Pretesting Process
 Seeks to determine whether respondents have any
difficulty understanding the questionnaire and
whether there are any ambiguous or biased
questions.
• Preliminary Tabulation
 A tabulation of the results of a pretest to help
determine whether the questionnaire will meet the
objectives of the research.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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Designing Questionnaires for Global
Markets
• Back Translation
 Taking a questionnaire that has previously been
translated into another language and having a
second, independent translator translate it back to the
original language.
 A questionnaire developed in one country may be
difficult to translate because equivalent language
concepts do not exist or because of differences in
idiom and vernacular.
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted
to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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