This document outlines different methods for designing research instruments. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of questionnaires, including closed-ended and open-ended questions. Interviews are also examined, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured types. Problems that can occur with interviews include the relationship between interviewer and interviewee and accurately recording responses. The document provides examples of question formats and considerations for creating effective research instruments.

1. Designing research instruments
Presented by: Hédia Oueslati
ISLT
April2019

2. 1. Advantages/Disadvantages of questionnaires
2. Types of questionnaires
3. Closed-ended questions
4. Open-ended questions
5. Types of interviews
6. Problems with interviews
outline

3. Advantages of Questionnaires
Questionnaires are very popular among researches for various reasons
 They offer a good deal of clarity and precision
 They can be used on a small-scale or a large-scale research
 Data can be gathered from various respondents at the same time
 Less pressure on respondents
 They do not require special training

4. Disadvantages
 No control over the respondent’s environment
 Low return rate: distribute 50 and you get back 20
 Some answers can be wrong

5. Types of questions
 Closed-ended questions
Questions in which respondents select one or more options from a pre-
determined set of options
 Open-ended questions
Give more freedom to the respondent to give more personal arguments and
provide more detailed information

6. Closed questions
1. Yes-no Questions
Do you work in teams?
YES
NO
Are there extra-curricular activities in your institution?
YES
NO

7. Closed-ended questions
2-Multiple choice
Closed-ended questions with more than two response alternatives
Please tick one option that is relevant to you
Compared to our competitors, do find our product
Better
Worse
Of the same quality

8. Ranked questions
Ask respondents to rank the alternatives with a clear instruction like:
Please indicate your order of preference with a number between 1and5
1=the most favoured and 5=the least favoured
Or
5=the most favoured and 1=the least favoured
NB, be systematic if several ranked questions are used in the questionnaire

9. Scaled Questions
 A very familiar type is Likert Scale
Degrees of agreement
Strongly Disagree -Disagree –Undecided- Agree -Strongly Agree
 Questions about Frequency
Always –Usually- Often- Sometimes -Never

10. Advantages of closed questions
• Easy to process data collected from these questions
• Easy to answer
• They save time

11. Open-ended questions
 They give more freedom to the respondent to give more personal arguments
and provide more detailed information than that collected from closed
questions
 Useful for qualitative data

12. Things to avoid in a questionnaire
 Avoid ambiguous words
 Avoid questions containning negation
 Avoid hypothetical questions: if ….
 Avoid acronyms and abbreviations
You should rather:
 Make the questions clear and simple
 Make it attractive with a clear layout
 Add a note of thanks at the end

13. 2-Types of interviews
There are three types of interviews:
1-Structured
2-Semi-structured
3-Unstructured

14. Structured interviews
 Similar to questionnaires in the layout and in the purpose: they both target a
large population.
 Interviews have advantages over questionnaires as the give room to the
interviewer to ask for clarification = a better response rate,
 A small population: use a structured interview better than a questionnaire
 Structured interviews are conducted by companies (street, telephone…) in
order to report about customer satisfaction or to find out about a new
product,

15. Semi-structured interviews
 They give the opportunity for follow-up questions
 They give the possibiliy to change the order of questions
richer interactions and more personalized answers

16. Unstructured interviews
Based on open-ended questions and the flow of the interaction is guided by the
responses of the interviewee
e.g. Have there been any important events for you since you arrived?
How do you qualify communication between employees?
Qualitative dada: interpretation/ categories/themes

17. Problems with interviews
1-Relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee
Vertical asymmetrical: teacher- student /manager-employee
-Difficult to extract personal information
-Implications for the formulations of the questions
-Feasibility of some questions(Nunan1992;McDonough1996)

18. 2-How to record data
-Write after the interview: memory limitation
-Audio-recording: requires permission
-Note-taking: can distract the attention of both parts

19. A sample paragraph
Research methodology
1-Data collection instrument
In order to collect data for this research, a questionnaire was
administered to the employees of the bank. Respondents were asked to
rank their concerns regarding: communication , team work….
They were equally asked to comment/ justify their ranking so that a
qualitative dimension would be added to data. Questionnaires were
collected from 40 respondents: 25female and 15 male aged between 27
and 58.

20. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
ATTENTION
1