Practical Problems in Questionnaire Design.

This paper presents a discussion highlighting some of the pitfalls facing a researcher in trying to develop a valid questionnaire instrument which is nonetheless acceptable within an environment influenced by the prevailing perceptions, values, and philosophies of operating managers. Various management groups representing the sponsor may have interest both in the content of the questionnaire and the data generated. This interest of the sponsor, creates a problem for the researcher both in terms of determining who should be informed and who should participate in questionnaire design. Too many researchers alienate management groups because they don't take this communication problem into consideration when they plan their project. There is no doubt that touching all bases slows a project down but in the long run the success of present and future research may depend on this communication. Turning now to some of the problems associated with the respondents, there are three areas of particular concern: Questionnaire acceptability, anonymity, and participation in questionnaire development. It has been our experience that questionnaires are typically administered to a population which is quite different from the researcher both in terms of vocabulary and level of reading comprehension. Yet, too often the questionnaire is developed which includes behavioral science jargon and is written at a reading level too high for the participant's. Pretesting of the questionnaire will highlight these problems but pretesting may not be undertaken because the researcher lacks the confidence to stand up to his sponsors who arc pushing for results, or the researcher just simply fails to adhere to accepted principles of questionnaire development.