Chapter 9

1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of personally administered, questionnaires, mail

questionnaires, and electronic questionnaires.

Table 9.1 (p. 148) provides an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of personally administered,
questionnaires, mail questionnaires, and electronic questionnaires.

2. Explain the principles of wording, stating how these are important in questionnaire design, citing
examples not in the book.

a. The wording of the question and the level of sophistication of the language used are important.
These are important because, if the respondent does not understand the words, obviously, he or she is
not going to be able to respond to the questions. An underground coal miner and a top business
executive may need to be asked some of the same issues differently. Thus, using words that fit the level
of sophistication of understanding of the respondent is necessary. To take an extreme example, to assess
the experienced quality of family life, a poorly educated farm hand may be first asked to list the activities

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he normally engages in when he gets home from work, and then asked to rate the extent of satisfaction

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gained from each of these activities. An index of quality of family life might then be calculated by

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examining the family-related activities listed by the respondent. With a business executive, on the other

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hand, the same concept can be tapped by asking the individual to rate his or her satisfaction to questions

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such as: Balance between work and family life; the impact of travelling on experiencing quality time with
the family, and the like. rs e
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b. Both positively and negatively worded questions need to be asked in the questionnaire so that
the respondent does not mechanically answer the items without much mental engagement. For
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example, if one question asks for the level of excitement that a particular advertisement evoked, another
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could ask the extent to which that same advertisement seemed irrelevant. Obviously, when both are
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tapped on the same scale, the response to both cannot be the same. This break in the way the questions
are worded both positively and negatively, helps to enhance the attention span of the respondents who
might otherwise respond mechanically.
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c. Double barreled questions should be avoided. If one asks the question, “Do you value and
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manage a diverse workforce well”?, there may be no clear response given to the question because one
may value a diverse workforce, but hardly know how to manage it! In such cases, it would be better to
ask two separate questions rather than one.
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d. Ambiguous questions should also be avoided. Questions such as “Do you discuss your work with
the president regularly”? or “Do you go to the movies frequently”? are ambiguous, because the terms
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regularly and frequently are left open to the interpretation of each respondent. One individual might
discuss work with the president on a daily basis, and another every six months. Both are “regularly” (or
at regular intervals) discussing work! But is this what the researcher is looking for? Similarly, frequently
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going to the movies might mean one movie every week to one person, one movie every month to
another, and three times a week to a third person! Since these terms are not defined, biased data will be
procured from the respondents.

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 e. Recall dependent questions will also introduce biases. For example, not many people remember
when exactly they started smoking, or why they quit a particular school and joined another when they
were 10 years old.

f. Leading questions also result in biased responses because the interviewee might be led to
believe that a particular type of answer is sought and might try to oblige the interviewer, even if the
response is not what the individual believes to be true. An example of a leading question is: Don’t you
think that more women should be promoted to decision-making line positions in organizations? Such a
question is likely to elicit the obvious response, “Surely, Yes”!

g. Loaded questions should also be avoided because of the emotionality it invokes, thus eliciting
biased responses. As an example: “Don’t you think that the L.A.P.D. is biased against blacks?” is a
question with racial overtones which will bring forth emotional, rather than objective responses to the
question.

h. Questions invoking social desirability will also produce biased responses. An example would be
to ask if anyone felt that workforce diversity is bad for the system. In the context of the changing

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demographics of the workforce, even if some felt that diversity at the workplace is disastrous, they

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would tend not to disagree because it is not a socially acceptable response.

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i. It is also important to avoid lengthy questions which might confuse the respondent and

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introduce several types of biases. An example of a long question is: To what extent would asking for
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responses from different groups of employees, such as for instance, production, marketing, R & D,
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advertising, and sales, on such issues as the policy governing the organization, the organizational culture,
staff discipline and other related matters, provide valid data to the president, to enable him to make
some critical decisions on how to run the company effectively and efficiently?
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3. How are multiple methods of data collection and from multiple sources related to reliability and
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validity of the measures?

If there is convergence or strong correlation among the data obtained from different data collection
methods on the same variable, then one can establish convergent validity because the data converge
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even when collected by different methods. The same holds true when there is a strong and significant
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correlation between the data obtained on the same variable from different sources. Though reliability
cannot be directly assessed from multi-methods or multi-sources of data collection, usually, since a valid
instrument is reliable (though the converse may not necessarily be true), one can presume reliability if
validity is established through the multi-trait, multi-matrix method.
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4. Every data-collection method has its own built-in biases. Therefore, resorting to multi-methods of
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data collection is only going to compound the biases. Critique this statement.

It is true that most data collection methods in the social sciences have their own built-in biases. For
instance, interviews are susceptible to interviewer and respondent biases, observational data will have
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observer and actor biases, and so on. But when data are collected through multiple methods and
compared, if the correlations among the several types of responses received through the different data
collection methods are high, we can be fairly confident that the data have good validity and reliability –
i.e. they are “good.” If the correlations are low, however, we would start wondering about the goodness
of our data. We would then pay closer attention to the methods used. For instance, if respondents say

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 that they experience a high level of meaningfulness in their jobs when they are interviewed, and when
the concept is measured through several items in the questionnaire, we would be inclined to treat these
as acceptable data even though both may have a low correlation to data obtained from a sentence
completion motivational research. If, however, there is no correlation at all among any of the methods,
the goodness of the data collected will be highly suspect.

Thus, multi-methods of data collection help us to make certain judgments about the goodness of our
data and serves to make decisions on which sets of data may perhaps be more acceptable than others.

5. One way to deal with discrepancies found in the data obtained from multiple sources is to average
the figures and take the mean as the value on the variable. What is your reaction to this?

Wherever possible “objective” data through unobtrusive methods, need to be obtained. For instance, if
employees’ performance is to be measured, it is better to go through the person’s records and
evaluation forms of the superiors (in case more objective measures of output are not available).
However, such records are usually confidential in nature and are not likely to be made accessible to the
researcher. Hence data will be sought from multiple sources–for example, from the subject, the co-

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workers, the immediate supervisor, other superiors, and perhaps even the subordinates. If there is not

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much consistency in the data obtained through these various sources, there is no option left but to

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average these. However, the researcher should point out the biases inherent in this and acknowledge
this limitation in the report.

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6. How has the advancement of technology helped data gathering via questionnaires?
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Electronic surveys by way of interviews or questionnaires, have the advantage of self correction in data,
in the sense that out of range responses etc., are automatically corrected on the spot, and skip patterns
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can be conveniently applied (e.g. if answer is no to question # 5, proceed to question # 19).

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The only drawback is that people might ignore and not respond to electronic surveys, and some may not
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have the requisite facilities.

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