5 steps planning before questionnaire development is a common guide for different research fields. Questionnaire is an essential instrument for data collection. Its planned designing will support in achievement of your study objectives. Let’s start the planning in following way
Objectives of Questionnaire
You design questionnaire purposefully. That means there are certain objectives as well as goals associated with it. First make it clear what are your primary objective behind questionnaire development? You can get your answer by reviewing study objectives and hypothesis framed. Your questionnaire should contain all the stuff that can solve your study purpose.
Extensive Literature Review
A very basic exercise before questionnaire development is literature review. Past studies are good source of finding the factors associated with your research topic. A comparison between studies will let you know what factors are connected with a particular issue. A thorough review of studies will give you basis for accepting and rejecting factors in context of your study. These factors are the basis for framing questions in your questionnaire. Asking right questions is the foremost essential to achieve your goals.
Established Scales
Past established scales in relation to your study topic are good source of questionnaire development. It can give you a clear picture on how to structure a scale for your subject area. You can use an established scale if it fulfils your study purpose.
There are some important things need to be care about before choosing an established scale. Every instrument/scale is a copyright material of the author, who had developed it. The right way is to seek permission from author to use their scale for your purpose. Written permission is advisable.
Scales published before more than 20 years in books or in research papers could also be used by giving proper citation of authors in reference section. Many authors publish their scales and mentions clearly that their scale could be used for research purpose only by giving proper citation to authors.
You can also use part of an instrument like a section, selected questions etc. instead of using whole instrument. This depends on need of your study. In this case, you have to give proper citation to authors. You also need to mention that the part or questions are taken from particular study.
Type of Study
Qualitative or quantitative which type of study you are conducting plays important role in questionnaire development? The type of questions in quantitative varies greatly in comparison to qualitative study. Mix method studies are also there where a part of study is quantitative and other is qualitative.
In common method, questionnaire is developed in quantitative study. Observation, focus group discussion and interviews are generally used to collect data in qualitative study.
Expert View
After literature review, seeking expert view is another important step. Develop questions on the basis of literature review and give it to experts for review. The number of experts will depend on your study.
Along with subject experts review could also be done among your colleagues, students and probable respondents. This exercise will give you a list of targeted questions that will meet your objectives.
I hope above steps planning will lead you to design an effective questionnaire!!