Questionnaires are a crucial element of research, allowing us to collect data that can help uncover undiscovered insights about individuals. But they’re not without their limitations.
Questions can be self-administered, with participants answering all questions themselves, or researcher-administered, where the research team interviews a sample of respondents by phone, in-person, or online. Self-administered questionnaires tend to have lower response rates than researcher-administered questionnaires, due in part to the impersonal nature of mailed paper surveys and automated telephone menu systems.
Web-based surveys offer a range of advantages, including a wider audience than traditional surveys conducted via telephone or mail and the ability to include an international audience. They also have some challenges, including the difficulty in reaching a representative demographic sample. They can also be susceptible to issues like screen size as well as hardware platform, operating system, and browser settings, which could influence responses.
When designing a questionnaire, it is crucial to consider the research’s goals and objectives. It’s also essential to know your audience when creating questions that ask if they are able to understand and respond to the questions you have asked them to answer or if they have the enough time to complete a lengthy questionnaire.
It’s also essential to test new questionnaires ahead of time using qualitative methods such as focus groups, cognitive interviews, or pretesting (often by using an opt-in form of survey) to ensure they are working as intended. Also, questionnaires may be susceptible to “question order effects” where the answers to earlier questions could affect the answers to later ones.
internet-based.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-questionnaires
