Questionnaires – An information gathering tool

Questionnaires is a term used for almost any tool that has questions to which individual respond.It is usually associated with self-administered tools with items to the closed or fixed alternative type.

By its nature, questionnaires offer the following advantages –

• It is economical and requires less skills to administer than the interview.
• A questionnaire can be administered to huge numbers of individual simultaneously.
• The standardized wording, the order of questions and the standardized instructions for reporting responses ensure the uniformity of questions.
• The respondents feel greater confidence in the anonymity of a questionnaire than that of a interview. With a questionnaire, respondents give opinions without fear that the answer will be connected to their names.
• The questionnaire places less pressure on subjects for immediate responses. Respondents have time to think over the questions and do calculations to provide more accurate data.

Disadvantages of questionnaire –

• The principal disadvantage is a low percentage of returns.
• Many people have trouble expressing themselves in writing, especially when responding to essay (open) questions.

Procedure for Questionnaire Construction :
The procedure for constructing a questionnaire consist of the following steps:

1. Decide what data should be collected.It defines the problem to be investigated.
2. Decide what type of questionnaire closed or open-ended should be used.
3. Outline the topics for the questionnaire and then write the questions.
4. Edit the questionnaire for technical defects that reflect personal values.
5. Try out the questionnaire to find out how it works.
6. Do a final editing to ensure that the questionnaire is ready for administration.This includes a close look at the content, form and sequence of the questions as well as the appearance and clarity of the procedure for using the questionnaire.