This document provides guidance on developing effective survey questionnaires. It discusses what questionnaires are, when they should be used, and criteria for well-designed questionnaires. It also covers developing good questions, different question types, ordering questions and answers, wording questions clearly, translating questionnaires, pretesting questionnaires, and calculating response rates. The overall aim is to design questionnaires that meet research objectives, are easy for respondents to understand and complete, and produce high-quality, reliable data for analysis.

1. Developing
Survey Instrument
(questionnaire)
Dr. Quamrun Nahar
Summer 2016
North South University

2. What is a Questionnaire?
The overriding objective is to translate the researcher’s
information needs into a set of specific questions that
respondents are willing and able to answer.
Malhotra, 2006.
A questionnaire is a formalized set of
questions for obtaining information from
respondents.

3. When we use questionnaire?
–When need to administer to large
numbers of individuals simultaneously
–When resources and money are limited
–Impersonal nature
–Familiar to most people

4. Criteria of a well designed
Questionnaire
– Meet objectives of the study
– Understandable for the data collector
– Easy to understand for the respondent
– Obtain complete and necessary information
– Interview should be brief
– Constructed in such a way that analysis could
be done
– Pre-tested

5. What we do?
• Create a new questionnaire
• Adapt a tested questionnaire
• Make context-specific questionnaire

6. Questionnaire development
• General rules
• Good questions
• Type of questions
• Ordering of questions and answers
• Wording of questions
• Translation
• Pretesting

7. Questionnaire development
General rules
• Start with welcome message and self
introduction
• Taking consent
• Allow a “Don’t know” or ‘Not applicable’
response to all questions
• Include ‘Other’ or ‘None’ whenever either of
these is a logically possible answer
• Be clear, specific and direct
• Do not put two questions into one
• Instruction for the respondent/ interviewer

8. Good question-1
• Questions must be non-threatening
• Does not use emotionally loaded or
vaguely defined words
• Does not use unfamiliar words or
abbreviations
• Asks for an answer on only one direction
• Can accommodate all possible
responses

9. Good question-2
• Does not presuppose a certain state of
affairs
• Does not imply a desired answer
• Has mutually exclusive options
• Produces variability of responses
• Sequencing

10. Type of questions-1
Multiple choice
• What is your marital status?
• Married living together
• Married living separately
• Not married but living together
• Single
• Widowed
• Divorced
Dichotomous
• Do you smoke?
• Yes
• No

11. Type of questions-2
• Numeric open-ended
How much do you earn per month?
______________
• Text open-ended
What was your reason for not participating in HIV
testing?
______________________________

12. Type of questions-3
Agreement scale/Likert scale
How much do you agree with following statement?
» Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree
• The health worker was friendly
• The health worker was respectful
• The health worker was non judgmental
Rating scale
How was the service provided by the doctor?
• Excellent (4)
• Good (3)
• Fair (2)
• Poor (1)

13. Type of question-4
• Filter or contingency question.
Have you called in this month?
Yes No
If Yes,
How many times?
1
2
3
4
5

14. Question and Answer Order-1
• The order of questions and answers can
encourage people to complete the
questionnaire
• The order of questions or the order of
answer choices can affect the results of
the survey

15. Question and Answer Order-2
• Early questions in a survey should be easy
and pleasant to answer
Opening questions should be easy to answer
and not in any way threatening to THE
respondents.

16. Question and Answer Order-3
• Group together questions on the same
topic (possibility to create
sections/modules
Utilization of antenatal services
Section 1: Socio-demographic characteristics
Section 2: Service utilization questions
Section 3: Knowledge about the services
Section 4: Recommendations about the services

17. Question and Answer Order-4
• Whenever possible place difficult or
sensitive questions towards the end or
middle of the survey
Example: Youth and HIV/AIDS
Age at first sex
Type of partner
Use of condom, breakage of condom
HIV testing

18. Wording-1
• Words like usually, often, sometimes,
occasionally, seldom, and rarely are
"commonly" used in questionnaires,
although it is clear that they do not mean
the same thing to all people.

19. Wording-2
• Some adjectives have highly variable
meanings and should be avoided in
surveys.
a clear mandate, most,
numerous,
a substantial majority, a
minority of,
a large proportion of,
a significant number of, many,
a considerable number of,
and several.

20. Wording-3
• Other adjectives produce less variability
and generally have more shared meaning.
• Sometimes we need to contextualize the
words, for example eclampsia.
lots, almost all, virtually all, nearly all, a
majority of, a consensus of, a small number
of, not very many of, almost none, hardly
any, a couple, and a few

21. Pre-testing
• How the instrument works in real situation?
– Both the questions and layout
• Experienced interviewer
• Population similar to the survey population
• How long an interview takes?
– Helps to determine how many interviewers
needed

22. Pre-testing
• The process of pre-testing a
questionnaire is frequently referred to as
piloting’ the questionnaire or conducting
a ‘pilot survey’
• The questionnaire is administered to a
limited number of individuals who
preferably belong the same population
from which we have drawn the sample
for the actual survey, but who are not
included in such sample

23. Pretesting
• Pre-testing a questionnaire allows to
check for comprehension and
coherence in the structure of the
questionnaire

24. Response Rate
• The response rate is the single most
important indicator of how much
confidence can be placed in the results of
a survey.
• A low response rate can be devastating for
the reliability of a study.

25. Finalization
• Use close ended questions as much as
possible
• Avoid too many categories
• Check skip patterns

26. Final note
• KEEP
• IT
• SHORT and
• SIMPLE