A questionnaire is a set of questions on a given topic. They can be filled in by the interviewer [interviewer: the person conducting the survey ] or by the person being asked the questions.
A questionnaire is best used to collect information that is not available elsewhere as a secondary resource.
Questionnaires offer a relatively cheap and quick way of obtaining information when they are well structured. Respondents are presented with a series of questions to answer by writing out a response or selecting an option from a list of existing answers.
Questionnaire aims
Before starting a questionnaire, make sure you know what you are trying to find out. Until you have identified exactly what you want to know, there's no point in starting to write the survey questions.
Before starting, come up with a hypothesis - a prediction of what you think the survey will show. After completing the survey, look at the results to see if they agree with your original hypothesis [hypothesis: an assumption one might make which can be tested by further investigation ].
Here are some examples of a questionnaire hypothesis:
- Everybody under 20 years old owns a mobile phone.
- Only young people watch digital TV.
- Only 5 per cent of households recycle rubbish.
You also need to know how the survey results will help you. There's no point in collecting vast amounts of information if it's not relevant to your aim. This is often something that people forget to do and will result in poor and unhelpful results.
Don't get in a panic by collecting too much information
The best use of a questionnaire is to collect information that is not available elsewhere as a secondary resource. This could be:
- People's views and opinions on a specific topic or local issue.
- Statistics about a very specific subject that hasn't already been researched, eg the number of homes in your street with digital TV or the number of students in your school who own mp3 players.
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