Survey Research Paper Using Questionnaires

1Survey questionnaires are the most commonly used form of collecting market research data due to their simplicity but can be lead to wasted time and effort, useless data and frustrated respondents due to poor design. The methodology that I used for my research is qualitative methodology. Qualitative methodology often begins with a small sample size, sometimes an individual participant, a solitary text document or a small group, and follows a rigorously applied but loosely defined pathway (Nicholls, 2009). In carrying out my research, a pilot/pre-test was done consisting of a small group in order to test questionnaire for the survey. Items covered with the persons pre-testing the questionnaire include: 1) any terms or words that were unfamiliar; 2) the clarity of the questions; 3) the flow of the questionnaire; 4) ability to access the form online; and, 5) the actual time required to complete the questionnaire.

In designing a questionnaire, several issues need to be put into consideration to make the survey successful. In a questionnaire survey, attention needs to be paid to the way the questions are created and laid out. Leading questions need to be avoided and in doing so, one need to make sure that these questions are avoided because they can make the respondents feel compelled to answer in a certain way which can be off-putting to the respondents and ruin the survey results. An example of this question to my research topic is “would you like to see a centralized LAN Admin model put in place instead of the current model?” Same applies to the compound questions, these types of questions need to be avoided because they consist of two or more questions in one. These questions are not ideal for a survey because the answers are usually different for each part of the question. Use of ambiguous questions in questionnaires need to be avoided also. These questions can produce inconsistent results as respondents may interpret their meanings in different ways.