Questionnaire Design and Testing

Topics covered

• General principles of designing questions (e.g., getting started with new questionnaires, common pitfalls to avoid, problematic formats)
• An exercise in critique existing survey questions
• An exercise in writing new questions
• Creating the questionnaire as a whole
• Special issues for interview versus self-completion design (including the pitfalls of poor visual layout in postal and web surveys)
• Some essentials of piloting

Objectives
By the end of the course, participants will:

• Have a greater awareness of the different aspects involved in writing good survey questions and questionnaires, taking into account the important differences between questionnaire design for interview surveys versus self-completion surveys
• Have the tools to critique existing surveys
• Have the knowledge to be able to write their own high quality questionnaires

Who will benefit?

• The course will benefit anyone who wishes to conduct their own survey or commission a survey.
• The course is suitable for people new to questionnaire design as well as those who have experience, but would like to brush up on the latest thinking.

Learning outcomes

Participants will have a good awareness of the optimal ways to word individual questions and create the questionnaire as a whole.

Course tutor

The day will be led by Dr Pamela Campanelli. Pamela is a Survey Methods Consultant and U.K. Chartered Statistician and Chartered Scientist. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from the London School of Economics, and an M.A. in survey research methods and B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she was a Research Associate at the at the University of Michigan, a Survey Statistician at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Chief Research Officer at the UK Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, and a Research Director at the Survey Methods Centre at the National Centre for Social Research, London.
Her main interests and publications are in the study of survey error and data quality issues, with special emphasis on questionnaire design, question testing strategies, survey sampling and survey analysis. In addition to her consultancy work, she has led a UK ESRC grant on survey nonresponse and been a team member of a UK ESRC grant to explore measurement error in mixed mode surveys. She regularly teaches short courses in the UK for the SRA, the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research and the Royal Statistical Society. She also provides courses both in the UK and internationally for government departments (e.g., Australian Bureau of Statistics), UK Survey Research companies (e.g., TNS-BMRB), universities (e.g., University of Wollongong Australia, University of Hong Kong, University of Michigan Summer Institute), as well as for various other institutions and businesses (e.g., Brazilian Network Information Center; UNESCO Asia Pacific, Civil Service College Singapore) (see www.thesurveycoach.com).

www.the-sra.org.uk/training