Questionnaire Design

Every cereal packet and magazine carries a questionnaire designed to discover how healthy your diet is, how good a lover you are, or whether you have the right qualities to enjoy life as a criminal lawyer. Some of these questionnaires work very well. If the intention is just to discover your age, it is hard to improve on the simple question, “What is your date of birth?” But when the intention is more complex, questionnaire design requires a much higher level of skill.

'Standalone' or self report measures: These are questionnaires aimed at the individual. They have the advantage of ease of use and application, but individuals may lack insight into themselves, or may lie or exaggerate the truth.

Self report measures are particularly useful for staff satisfaction, motivation or career interest measures, or for a situation such as selection.

360° questionnaires: These are questionnaires completed by the individual on their own behalf, and then completed by others, such as their boss, their peers and their reports, so that it is possible to compare the individual’s self rating on a scale with the ratings other people give them.

These are particularly useful for performance review and team development, and are also often used to give an individual a more rounded view of their personality in terms of their impact on others.

Example

A few of the considerations:

'Response set':
“Do you go to parties”
Very often…Often...Sometimes…Not often…Rarely.

Some people will always answer “down the middle” while others will almost always prefer the more extreme answers. These response characteristics may not really tell you much more about the individual than the way she always answers multiple choice questions, irrespective of content.

Complexity:
“Do you like dogs and cats”
Yes………Uncertain…….No.

The trouble here is that two questions are being asked, but only one answer is invited.
I like dogs and cats
I like dogs and dislike cats
I like cats and dislike dogs
I like cats and am uncertain about dogs…..
You get the picture……

Ambiguity:
"Are you unable to enjoy the theatre?"
Yes….Uncertain….No

Grammatically the answer “Yes” would mean you are unable to enjoy theatre, but many people will choose “No” because they imagine saying, “No, I am unable to enjoy the theatre” rather than the correct but clumsy double negative, “No, I am not unable to enjoy the theatre” (i.e. I do enjoy it) which “No” would imply.

OPS consultants have many years of experience in designing and using questionnaires. We can ensure that your questionnaire does exactly what it is intended to do, quickly and accessibly, with clear graphical and/or written output. We will work in partnership with you to understand your needs, clarify what you want to measure, and why, and how you want the output to look. We will create the structure, items, scaling and output, while making sure at every stage of the process that it meets your needs

We can run your questionnaire for you from our website, create a pencil and paper version or work alongside your IT staff if you prefer to run it from your Intranet

We can also manage the data for you and produce management reports to suit your requirements.

If you would like to talk about your questionnaire needs with an OPS consultant psychologist, please Contact Us.