Basic Survey Formats

Lecture 10

Department of Psychology AWKUM

SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONNAIRE
 A self-administered questionnaire is a structured form
that consists of a series of closed-ended and open-
ended questions. It is called self-administered as the
respondents fill it in themselves, without an
interviewer.
 Closed-ended questions have a list of possible options
listed, from which the respondents must choose - these
can be pre-coded. Open-ended questions permits any
answer that the respondent thinks is appropriate and
should be recorded in the respondents' own words.
These need to be coded after all the possible responses
and assigned themes have been read.
Self administered Web Questionnaire
 A self-administered questionnaire (also referred to
as a mailed questionnaire) is a data collection tool
in which written questions are presented that are to
be answered by the respondents in written form.
 A written questionnaire can be administered in
different ways, for example:
 Sending questionnaires by mail with clear
instructions on how to answer the questions and
requests for mailed responses;
 Gathering all or part of the respondents in one
place at one time, giving oral or written
instructions, and letting the respondents fill out the
questionnaires; or
 Hand-delivering questionnaires to respondents and
collecting them later.
 Electronic Method of Self-Administered
Questionnaire Method
 In recent times, electronic surveys can be
conducted by e-mail or administered on the
Internet or the Web (Malhotra, 2007).
 E-mail interviews
 To conduct an e-mail survey, a list of e-mail
addresses is prepared. The survey is posted within
the body of the e-mail message. The e-mails are
then sent out over the Internet.
 Advantages of Self-administered
Questionnaire
Considerably low cost
 The economy is one of the most obvious
benefits of a mailed questionnaire. The mail
questionnaire does not require a trained staff of
interviewers and supervisors; all it requires is
the cost of planning, sampling, duplicating,
mailing, and providing self-addressed
envelopes for the returns.
 Ease in locating respondents
 Except in extreme cases, locating respondents in a
mailed questionnaire survey is sometimes easier,
especially if the survey is conducted with specialized
and homogeneous samples.
 Saving of time
 The mailed questionnaire can be sent to all respondents
simultaneously, and most of the replies will be
received within a week or so. It is, however, also true
that final returns may take several weeks or longer.
 Respondent’s convenience
The respondent may devote total time on it than he
or she can do so in an interview study. This
convenience may help him or her to answer more
correctly. Also, this gives him or her more time to
deal with difficult questions.
 Greater anonymity
The absence of an interviewer provides the
respondent with greater anonymity. This makes him
or her more willing to provide socially undesirable
answers or answers that violate norms.
 Less chance of biasing error
 There is no opportunity for the respondent to be biased
by the presence of an interviewer. The personal
characteristics of the interviewer and the variability of
their skills may result in the biasing effect.
Disadvantages of Self-administered
Questionnaire
 Limitations of the questionnaire
 The only short and straightforward questionnaire with
a few complex, open-ended, screening, and/or tedious
questions can be used so that the respondents can
understand with the help of the printed instructions and
definitions.
 Low response rate
The greatest disadvantage of the mailed questionnaire is
its low response rate. Mailed studies sometimes receive a
response rate of as low as 10 percent, and 50 percent is
considered adequate.
 Inflexibility
 The answers received in a mailed questionnaire have
to be accepted as final, because there remains no
scope to probe beyond the given answer to clarify an
ambiguous one, to overcome unwillingness to answer
a particular answer.
 Verbal behavior
 There is no interviewer present to observe non-verbal
behavior or to make personal assessments of the
respondent’s social class or other pertinent
characteristics. A lower-class respondent may pass
himself off as upper class in a mailed questionnaire,
with no challenge from an interviewer.
 Telephone Surveys:
 Telephone survey are a method of data collection
wherein interviewers contact respondents via
telephone to conduct an interview by asking the
respondent a list of different questions from a
questionnaire.
 Advantages of phone-based interviewing
 Research can be gathered quickly because phone
interviews are immediate and skilled interviewers
can complete a lot of surveys in a day of work.
 Most people have telephones, so you have an ample
audience for gathering a representative sample to
complete the survey.
 Disadvantages of a phone survey
 Sometimes telephone calls are perceived as
telemarketing and thus negatively received by potential
respondents. This might influence your response rate.
 It can be challenging to design an effective phone
survey because the questions need to be short and
precise for easy comprehension.
Face-to-face interview
 Face-to-face interview is a data collection method
when the interviewer directly communicates with
the respondent in accordance with the prepared
questionnaire.
 This method enables to acquire factual
information, evaluations, attitudes, preferences and
other information coming out during the
conversation with the respondent. Thus, face-to-
face interview method ensures the quality of the
obtained data and increases the response rate.