Designing Research Questionnaires for Business and Management Students by Ekinci Yuksel;

Author:Ekinci, Yuksel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473917392
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Limited
Published: 2020-10-20T19:29:20.783929+00:00

7. Are the questions applicable to all respondents? Prospective respondents often try to answer a question even though they lack an opinion or are ineligible. Therefore, questions should not presume that they necessarily possess knowledge or opinions regarding the topic of investigation. Examples of such questions are: ‘What brand of cigarette do you smoke?’ (You assume that all respondents are smokers), ‘How long did it take you to find a parking place at the restaurant?’ (You assume that all customers travel by car). You should determine the eligibility of respondents in advance so that answers to the question will be comparable. This can be achieved through the use of a filtering or screening question. These questions will help collect preliminary information to determine the eligibility of respondents and whether they should skip some questions and continue to answer others. For example, the smoking question can best be asked after the response to a filtering question such as: ‘Do you smoke regularly?’ ‘Yes’, ‘No’. If the answer is ‘No’, the respondent can skip this question. You can determine whether the person is eligible to respond to all questions by using filtering and screening questions. This is based on questions relating to their socio-demographic characteristics (i.e. age, occupation, level of education, etc.), behavioural characteristics (number of purchases in a given time frame) or topical knowledge.

8. Are questions ‘double-barrelled’? When two questions are included within one question, it becomes double-barrelled. Answers to a double-barrelled question will have two or three different meanings. A respondent may agree with one part of the question but not the other, or will answer them all without making a particular judgement. Therefore, double-barrelled questions should be avoided. In doing so, double-barrelled questions should be split into two or more separate questions. For example, the response to the following double-barrelled questions will be problematic: ‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your current work salary and work environment?’, ‘Do you think there is a vacancy in your department and do you think that it will pay well?’ The problem with these questions is obvious: the respondent may agree with one part of the question but not the other. For example, if the employee answers ‘Yes’ to the first question it could be interpreted in three different ways: (1) satisfied with the current salary and the current work environment, (2) satisfied with the current salary but not the current work environment, or (3) satisfied with the current work environment but not the current salary. It would be better to split this into two separate questions: ‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your current salary?’ and ‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your current work environment?’ If double-barrelled questions are asked in multi-attribute statements to measure attitudes or opinions, there will be a serious threat to the reliability of data because answers to a double-barrelled statement will not be consistent with others to measure the same construct. For example, it is often assumed that there is symmetry between cleanliness and comfort or cleanliness and tidiness when assessing quality of service.

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