Asking Questions - The Definitive Guide To Questionnaire Design ...

240 ASKING QUESTIONS
Finally, the amount of time it takes to administer a questionnaire
in the classroom may represent only a portion of the actual
time required to complete the process of using student ratings.
There are significant time-related costs to analyze, print, and distribute
these results (Millman, 1981). Given these costs, forms
should provide the most reliable and valid feedback possible. An
individual experienced in both education and instructional evaluation
should pool student suggestions together into a final instrument.
In this way the questionnaire can provide the same degree
of precision and reliability that is merited given the costs involved
and the consequences (such as performance evaluation) of the
results.
Summary
Questions that evaluate performance follow the principles covered
previously in this book. One of the main purposes of this chapter is
to underscore the importance of the process of developing these
questionnaires. If the process of developing, measuring, administering,
and analyzing performance questions is seen as fair, it will contribute
to cooperation and acceptance of the outcomes. It is critical
to involve those people who will be evaluated and get their feedback
on the instrument and the way the questions are worded. In
some cases, this may result in different types of questions. (For
example, BARS can be useful in contexts where it is feared that
subjectivity could otherwise bias an evaluation.)
Instead of exclusively being used by managers to evaluate
employees, performance-related questions are now increasingly used
by employees to rate managers and by customers to rate employees.
Within the past twenty years, student ratings of professors have
been used increasingly to provide performance feedback and evaluation
of teachers and professors. Given the increasing use of these
questions, it is important we acknowledge some of their unique
challenges.