RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

322 QUESTIONNAIRES
open questions can lead to irrelevant and redundant
information; they may be too open-ended
for the respondent to know what kind of information
is being sought; they may require much
more time from the respondent to enter a response
(thereby leading to refusal to complete the item),
and they may make the questionnaire appear
long and discouraging. With regard to analysis,
the data are not easily compared across participants,
and the responses are difficult to code
and to classify (see http://www.routledge.com/
textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 15, file
15.2. ppt).
We consider in more detail below the different
kinds of closed and open questions.
Scales of data
The questionnaire designer will need to choose
the metric – the scale of data – to be adopted.
This concerns numerical data, and we advise
readers to turn to Part Five for an analysis of
the different scales of data that can be gathered
(nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio) and the
different statistics that can be used for analysis.
Nominal data indicate categories; ordinal data
indicate order (‘high’ to ‘low’, ‘first’ to ‘last’,
‘smallest’ to ‘largest’, ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly
agree’, ‘not at all’ to ‘a very great deal’); ratio
data indicate continuous values and a true zero
(e.g. marks in a test, number of attendances per
year) (see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 15, file 15.3. ppt).
These are presented thus:
Question type
Dichotomous questions
Multiple choice questions
Rank ordering
Rating scales
Constant sum questions
Ratio data questions
Open-ended questions
Level of data
Nominal
Nominal
Ordinal
Ordinal
Ordinal
Ratio
Word-based data
The dangers of assuming knowledge or
viewpoints
There is often an assumption that respondents will
have the information or have an opinion about the
matters in which researchers are interested. This is
adangerousassumption.Itisparticularlyaproblem
when administering questionnaires to children,
who may write anything rather than nothing. This
means that the opportunity should be provided
for respondents to indicate that they have no
opinion, or that they don’t know the answer to a
particular question, or to state that they feel the
question does not apply to them. This is frequently
amatterinsurveysofcustomersatisfactionin
social science, where respondents are asked, for
example, to answer a host of questions about the
services provided by utility companies (electricity,
gas, water, telephone) about which they have
no strong feelings, and, in fact, they are only
interested in whether the service is uninterrupted,
reliable, cheap, easy to pay for, and that their
complaints are solved.
There is also the issue of choice of vocabulary
and the concepts and information behind them.
It is essential that, regardless of the type of
question asked, the language and the concepts
behind the language should be within the grasp of
the respondents. Simply because the researcher is
interested in, and has a background in, a particular
topic is no guarantee that the respondents will be
like minded. The effect of the questionnaire on
the respondent has to be considered carefully.
Dichotomous questions
Ahighlystructuredquestionnairewillaskclosed
questions. These can take several forms. Dichotomous
questions require a ‘yes’/‘no’ response, e.g.
‘Have you ever had to appear in court’, ‘Do you
prefer didactic methods to child-centred methods’
(see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 15, file 15.4. ppt). The
layout of a dichotomous question can be thus:
Sex(please tick) : Male □ Female □
The dichotomous question is useful, for it compels
respondents to come off the fence on an issue. It
provides a clear, unequivocal response. Further, it
is possible to code responses quickly, there being
only two categories of response. A dichotomous
question is also useful as a funnelling or sorting