Lecture topic

Questionnaire Design

PRM Course
Community Research Methodology

Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan

Institute of Rural Management Anand
Dt. 12 and 16 October 2021
 Recap
Non-random sampling methods
Purposive or judgement sampling
Convenience sampling
Quota sampling
Snowball sampling
Inverse sampling

Questionnaire design
Close-ended and open-ended questions: structured, unstructured,
semi-structured
Options – depends on the research
optimal in terms of exhaustiveness, mutually exclusiveness, disaggregated
Efficient use of space Ease to fill
Dos and don’ts of questionnaire design
Mail-based and group administered survey
doubts or clarifications?
 Biases in survey research
Non-response bias

Systematic reason

Reduce: advanced request, reminder, content relevance,

result relevance, mention the time, endorsements,
incentives, confidentiality

Sampling bias

Social desirability bias

Recall bias
 Lecture topic
Data Handling

PRM Course
Community Research Methodology

Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan

Institute of Rural Management Anand
Dt. 12 October 2021
 Importance of measurement
Quality of good research is dependent on what measurement techniques
are adopted by the researcher and how the same fits to the prevailing
research circumstances
 Normalization of data
Why to normalize?
Four reasons

How to normalize?
 Types of data Cont...

Response format

Dichotomous response
Ex: yes/no; true/false

Nominal response
Ex: types of jobs; types of industries – more than two options

Ordinal response
Ex: levels of satisfaction; extent of pain

Interval response
Ex: temperature
Continuous response (ratio variable)
Ex: height; age
 Data measurement
Some measurements are straightforward whereas some are not

Creativity, prejudice, etc.

(unlike height, weight)

Multidimensional vs. Unidimensional

Ex: living conditions
(house type,
water connection,
electricity,
kitchen,
toilet)

Reflective and formative indicators

 Data measurement Cont...

Binary scale

Ex: a six-item binary scale to assess political activism

(Bhatacherjee, 2012)
 Data measurement Cont...

Likert scale

Ex: a six-item Likert scale to assess employee self-esteem

(Bhatacherjee, 2012)
 Data measurement Cont...

Likert scale
Median value = neutral
(there can be exceptions)

Forced choice approach (no neutral) – not a good idea

must not be treated as interval scale

(Bhatacherjee, 2012)
 Data measurement Cont...

Semantic differential scale

Ex: a semantic differential scale for measuring attitude toward national
health insurance

more flexible in choosing the adjectives

(Bhatacherjee, 2012)
 Data measurement Cont...

Guttman scale
Ex: attitude toward immigrants

(Bhatacherjee, 2012)
 Thank You
Queries and Suggestions

E-mails:
happyhippu@gmail.com,
hippu@irma.ac.in