research project questionnaire

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• Perspect Clin Res
• v.14(3); Jul-Sep 2023
• PMC10405529

Designing and validating a research questionnaire - Part 1

Priya ranganathan.

Department of Anaesthesiology, Tata Memorial Centre, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Carlo Caduff

1 Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

Questionnaires are often used as part of research studies to collect data from participants. However, the information obtained through a questionnaire is dependent on how it has been designed, used, and validated. In this article, we look at the types of research questionnaires, their applications and limitations, and how a new questionnaire is developed.

INTRODUCTION

In research studies, questionnaires are commonly used as data collection tools, either as the only source of information or in combination with other techniques in mixed-method studies. However, the quality and accuracy of data collected using a questionnaire depend on how it is designed, used, and validated. In this two-part series, we discuss how to design (part 1) and how to use and validate (part 2) a research questionnaire. It is important to emphasize that questionnaires seek to gather information from other people and therefore entail a social relationship between those who are doing the research and those who are being researched. This social relationship comes with an obligation to learn from others , an obligation that goes beyond the purely instrumental rationality of gathering data. In that sense, we underscore that any research method is not simply a tool but a situation, a relationship, a negotiation, and an encounter. This points to both ethical questions (what is the relationship between the researcher and the researched?) and epistemological ones (what are the conditions under which we can know something?).

At the start of any kind of research project, it is crucial to select the right methodological approach. What is the research question, what is the research object, and what can a questionnaire realistically achieve? Not every research question and not every research object are suitable to the questionnaire as a method. Questionnaires can only provide certain kinds of empirical evidence and it is thus important to be aware of the limitations that are inherent in any kind of methodology.

WHAT IS A RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRE?

A research questionnaire can be defined as a data collection tool consisting of a series of questions or items that are used to collect information from respondents and thus learn about their knowledge, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior and informed by a positivist philosophy of the natural sciences that consider methods mainly as a set of rules for the production of knowledge; questionnaires are frequently used instrumentally as a standardized and standardizing tool to ask a set of questions to participants. Outside of such a positivist philosophy, questionnaires can be seen as an encounter between the researcher and the researched, where knowledge is not simply gathered but negotiated through a distinct form of communication that is the questionnaire.

STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF QUESTIONNAIRES

A questionnaire may not always be the most appropriate way of engaging with research participants and generating knowledge that is needed for a research study. Questionnaires have advantages that have made them very popular, especially in quantitative studies driven by a positivist philosophy: they are a low-cost method for the rapid collection of large amounts of data, even from a wide sample. They are practical, can be standardized, and allow comparison between groups and locations. However, it is important to remember that a questionnaire only captures the information that the method itself (as the structured relationship between the researcher and the researched) allows for and that the respondents are willing to provide. For example, a questionnaire on diet captures what the respondents say they eat and not what they are eating. The problem of social desirability emerges precisely because the research process itself involves a social relationship. This means that respondents may often provide socially acceptable and idealized answers, particularly in relation to sensitive questions, for example, alcohol consumption, drug use, and sexual practices. Questionnaires are most useful for studies investigating knowledge, beliefs, values, self-understandings, and self-perceptions that reflect broader social, cultural, and political norms that may well diverge from actual practices.

TYPES OF RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRES

Research questionnaires may be classified in several ways:

Depending on mode of administration

Research questionnaires may be self-administered (by the research participant) or researcher administered. Self-administered (also known as self-reported or self-completed) questionnaires are designed to be completed by respondents without assistance from a researcher. Self-reported questionnaires may be administered to participants directly during hospital or clinic visits, mailed through the post or E-mail, or accessed through websites. This technique allows respondents to answer at their own pace and simplifies research costs and logistics. The anonymity offered by self-reporting may facilitate more accurate answers. However, the disadvantages are that there may be misinterpretations of questions and low response rates. Significantly, relevant context information is missing to make sense of the answers provided. Researcher-reported (or interviewer-reported) questionnaires may be administered face-to-face or through remote techniques such as telephone or videoconference and are associated with higher response rates. They allow the researcher to have a better understanding of how the data are collected and how answers are negotiated, but are more resource intensive and require more training from the researchers.

The choice between self-administered and researcher-administered questionnaires depends on various factors such as the characteristics of the target audience (e.g., literacy and comprehension level and ability to use technology), costs involved, and the need for confidentiality/privacy.

Depending on the format of the questions

Research questionnaires can have structured or semi-structured formats. Semi-structured questionnaires allow respondents to answer more freely and on their terms, with no restrictions on their responses. They allow for unusual or surprising responses and are useful to explore and discover a range of answers to determine common themes. Typically, the analysis of responses to open-ended questions is more complex and requires coding and analysis. In contrast, structured questionnaires provide a predefined set of responses for the participant to choose from. The use of standard items makes the questionnaire easier to complete and allows quick aggregation, quantification, and analysis of the data. However, structured questionnaires can be restrictive if the scope of responses is limited and may miss potential answers. They also may suggest answers that respondents may not have considered before. Respondents may be forced to fit their answers into the predetermined format and may not be able to express personal views and say what they really want to say or think. In general, this type of questionnaire can turn the research process into a mechanical, anonymous survey with little incentive for participants to feel engaged, understood, and taken seriously.

STRUCTURED QUESTIONS: FORMATS

Some examples of close-ended questions include:

e.g., Please indicate your marital status:

• Prefer not to say.

e.g., Describe your areas of work (circle or tick all that apply):

• Clinical service
• Administration
• Strongly agree
• Strongly disagree.
• Numerical scales: Please rate your current pain on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is no pain and 10 is the worst imaginable pain
• Symbolic scales: For example, the Wong-Baker FACES scale to rate pain in older children
• Ranking: Rank the following cities as per the quality of public health care, where 1 is the best and 5 is the worst.

A matrix questionnaire consists of a series of rows with items to be answered with a series of columns providing the same answer options. This is an efficient way of getting the respondent to provide answers to multiple questions. The EORTC QLQ-C30 is an example of a matrix questionnaire.[ 1 ]

For a more detailed review of the types of research questions, readers are referred to a paper by Boynton and Greenhalgh.[ 2 ]

USING PRE-EXISTING QUESTIONNAIRES VERSUS DEVELOPING A NEW QUESTIONNAIRE

Before developing a questionnaire for a research study, a researcher can check whether there are any preexisting-validated questionnaires that might be adapted and used for the study. The use of validated questionnaires saves time and resources needed to design a new questionnaire and allows comparability between studies.

However, certain aspects need to be kept in mind: is the population/context/purpose for which the original questionnaire was designed similar to the new study? Is cross-cultural adaptation required? Are there any permission needed to use the questionnaire? In many situations, the development of a new questionnaire may be more appropriate given that any research project entails both methodological and epistemological questions: what is the object of knowledge and what are the conditions under which it can be known? It is important to understand that the standardizing nature of questionnaires contributes to the standardization of objects of knowledge. Thus, the seeming similarity in the object of study across diverse locations may be an artifact of the method. Whatever method one uses, it will always operate as the ground on which the object of study is known.

DESIGNING A NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRE

Once the researcher has decided to design a new questionnaire, several steps should be considered:

Gathering content

It creates a conceptual framework to identify all relevant areas for which the questionnaire will be used to collect information. This may require a scoping review of the published literature, appraising other questionnaires on similar topics, or the use of focus groups to identify common themes.

Create a list of questions

Questions need to be carefully formulated with attention to language and wording to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. Table 1 lists a few examples of poorlyworded questions that could have been phrased in a more appropriate manner. Other important aspects to be noted are:

Examples of poorly phrased questions in a research questionnaire

• Provide a brief introduction to the research study along with instructions on how to complete the questionnaire
• Allow respondents to indicate levels of intensity in their replies, so that they are not forced into “yes” or “no” answers where intensity of feeling may be more appropriate
• Collect specific and detailed data wherever possible – this can be coded into categories. For example, age can be captured in years and later classified as <18 years, 18–45 years, 46 years, and above. The reverse is not possible
• Avoid technical terms, slang, and abbreviations. Tailor the reading level to the expected education level of respondents
• The format of the questionnaire should be attractive with different sections for various subtopics. The font should be large and easy to read, especially if the questionnaire is targeted at the elderly
• Question sequence: questions should be arranged from general to specific, from easy to difficult, from facts to opinions, and sensitive topics should be introduced later in the questionnaire.[ 3 ] Usually, demographic details are captured initially followed by questions on other aspects
• Use contingency questions: these are questions which need to be answered only by a subgroup of the respondents who provide a particular answer to a previous question. This ensures that participants only respond to relevant sections of the questionnaire, for example, Do you smoke? If yes, then how long have you been smoking? If not, then please go to the next section.

TESTING A QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire needs to be valid and reliable, and therefore, any new questionnaire needs to be pilot tested in a small sample of respondents who are representative of the larger population. In addition to validity and reliability, pilot testing provides information on the time taken to complete the questionnaire and whether any questions are confusing or misleading and need to be rephrased. Validity indicates that the questionnaire measures what it claims to measure – this means taking into consideration the limitations that come with any questionnaire-based study. Reliability means that the questionnaire yields consistent responses when administered repeatedly even by different researchers, and any variations in the results are due to actual differences between participants and not because of problems with the interpretation of the questions or their responses. In the next article in this series, we will discuss methods to determine the reliability and validity of a questionnaire.

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Methodology

• Questionnaire Design | Methods, Question Types & Examples

Questionnaire Design | Methods, Question Types & Examples

Published on July 15, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

A questionnaire is a list of questions or items used to gather data from respondents about their attitudes, experiences, or opinions. Questionnaires can be used to collect quantitative and/or qualitative information.

Questionnaires are commonly used in market research as well as in the social and health sciences. For example, a company may ask for feedback about a recent customer service experience, or psychology researchers may investigate health risk perceptions using questionnaires.

Table of contents

Questionnaires vs. surveys, questionnaire methods, open-ended vs. closed-ended questions, question wording, question order, step-by-step guide to design, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about questionnaire design.

A survey is a research method where you collect and analyze data from a group of people. A questionnaire is a specific tool or instrument for collecting the data.

Designing a questionnaire means creating valid and reliable questions that address your research objectives , placing them in a useful order, and selecting an appropriate method for administration.

But designing a questionnaire is only one component of survey research. Survey research also involves defining the population you’re interested in, choosing an appropriate sampling method , administering questionnaires, data cleansing and analysis, and interpretation.

Sampling is important in survey research because you’ll often aim to generalize your results to the population. Gather data from a sample that represents the range of views in the population for externally valid results. There will always be some differences between the population and the sample, but minimizing these will help you avoid several types of research bias , including sampling bias , ascertainment bias , and undercoverage bias .

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Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered . Self-administered questionnaires are more common because they are easy to implement and inexpensive, but researcher-administered questionnaires allow deeper insights.

Self-administered questionnaires

Self-administered questionnaires can be delivered online or in paper-and-pen formats, in person or through mail. All questions are standardized so that all respondents receive the same questions with identical wording.

Self-administered questionnaires can be:

• cost-effective
• easy to administer for small and large groups
• anonymous and suitable for sensitive topics

But they may also be:

• unsuitable for people with limited literacy or verbal skills
• susceptible to a nonresponse bias (most people invited may not complete the questionnaire)
• biased towards people who volunteer because impersonal survey requests often go ignored.

Researcher-administered questionnaires

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in-person, or online between researchers and respondents.

Researcher-administered questionnaires can:

• help you ensure the respondents are representative of your target audience
• allow clarifications of ambiguous or unclear questions and answers
• have high response rates because it’s harder to refuse an interview when personal attention is given to respondents

But researcher-administered questionnaires can be limiting in terms of resources. They are:

• costly and time-consuming to perform
• more difficult to analyze if you have qualitative responses
• likely to contain experimenter bias or demand characteristics
• likely to encourage social desirability bias in responses because of a lack of anonymity

Your questionnaire can include open-ended or closed-ended questions or a combination of both.

Using closed-ended questions limits your responses, while open-ended questions enable a broad range of answers. You’ll need to balance these considerations with your available time and resources.

Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. Closed-ended questions are best for collecting data on categorical or quantitative variables.

Categorical variables can be nominal or ordinal. Quantitative variables can be interval or ratio. Understanding the type of variable and level of measurement means you can perform appropriate statistical analyses for generalizable results.

Examples of closed-ended questions for different variables

Nominal variables include categories that can’t be ranked, such as race or ethnicity. This includes binary or dichotomous categories.

It’s best to include categories that cover all possible answers and are mutually exclusive. There should be no overlap between response items.

In binary or dichotomous questions, you’ll give respondents only two options to choose from.

White Black or African American American Indian or Alaska Native Asian Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

Ordinal variables include categories that can be ranked. Consider how wide or narrow a range you’ll include in your response items, and their relevance to your respondents.

Likert scale questions collect ordinal data using rating scales with 5 or 7 points.

When you have four or more Likert-type questions, you can treat the composite data as quantitative data on an interval scale . Intelligence tests, psychological scales, and personality inventories use multiple Likert-type questions to collect interval data.

With interval or ratio scales , you can apply strong statistical hypothesis tests to address your research aims.

Pros and cons of closed-ended questions

Well-designed closed-ended questions are easy to understand and can be answered quickly. However, you might still miss important answers that are relevant to respondents. An incomplete set of response items may force some respondents to pick the closest alternative to their true answer. These types of questions may also miss out on valuable detail.

To solve these problems, you can make questions partially closed-ended, and include an open-ended option where respondents can fill in their own answer.

Open-ended questions

Open-ended, or long-form, questions allow respondents to give answers in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered. For example, respondents may want to answer “multiracial” for the question on race rather than selecting from a restricted list.

• How do you feel about open science?
• How would you describe your personality?
• In your opinion, what is the biggest obstacle for productivity in remote work?

Open-ended questions have a few downsides.

They require more time and effort from respondents, which may deter them from completing the questionnaire.

For researchers, understanding and summarizing responses to these questions can take a lot of time and resources. You’ll need to develop a systematic coding scheme to categorize answers, and you may also need to involve other researchers in data analysis for high reliability .

Question wording can influence your respondents’ answers, especially if the language is unclear, ambiguous, or biased. Good questions need to be understood by all respondents in the same way ( reliable ) and measure exactly what you’re interested in ( valid ).

Use clear language

You should design questions with your target audience in mind. Consider their familiarity with your questionnaire topics and language and tailor your questions to them.

For readability and clarity, avoid jargon or overly complex language. Don’t use double negatives because they can be harder to understand.

Use balanced framing

Respondents often answer in different ways depending on the question framing. Positive frames are interpreted as more neutral than negative frames and may encourage more socially desirable answers.

Use a mix of both positive and negative frames to avoid research bias , and ensure that your question wording is balanced wherever possible.

Unbalanced questions focus on only one side of an argument. Respondents may be less likely to oppose the question if it is framed in a particular direction. It’s best practice to provide a counter argument within the question as well.

Avoid leading questions

Leading questions guide respondents towards answering in specific ways, even if that’s not how they truly feel, by explicitly or implicitly providing them with extra information.

It’s best to keep your questions short and specific to your topic of interest.

• The average daily work commute in the US takes 54.2 minutes and costs $29 per day. Since 2020, working from home has saved many employees time and money. Do you favor flexible work-from-home policies even after it’s safe to return to offices?
• Experts agree that a well-balanced diet provides sufficient vitamins and minerals, and multivitamins and supplements are not necessary or effective. Do you agree or disagree that multivitamins are helpful for balanced nutrition?

Keep your questions focused

Ask about only one idea at a time and avoid double-barreled questions. Double-barreled questions ask about more than one item at a time, which can confuse respondents.

This question could be difficult to answer for respondents who feel strongly about the right to clean drinking water but not high-speed internet. They might only answer about the topic they feel passionate about or provide a neutral answer instead – but neither of these options capture their true answers.

Instead, you should ask two separate questions to gauge respondents’ opinions.

Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree

Do you agree or disagree that the government should be responsible for providing high-speed internet to everyone?

You can organize the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex. Alternatively, you can randomize the question order between respondents.

Logical flow

Using a logical flow to your question order means starting with simple questions, such as behavioral or opinion questions, and ending with more complex, sensitive, or controversial questions.

The question order that you use can significantly affect the responses by priming them in specific directions. Question order effects, or context effects, occur when earlier questions influence the responses to later questions, reducing the validity of your questionnaire.

While demographic questions are usually unaffected by order effects, questions about opinions and attitudes are more susceptible to them.

• How knowledgeable are you about Joe Biden’s executive orders in his first 100 days?
• Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Joe Biden is managing the economy?
• Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president?

It’s important to minimize order effects because they can be a source of systematic error or bias in your study.

Randomization

Randomization involves presenting individual respondents with the same questionnaire but with different question orders.

When you use randomization, order effects will be minimized in your dataset. But a randomized order may also make it harder for respondents to process your questionnaire. Some questions may need more cognitive effort, while others are easier to answer, so a random order could require more time or mental capacity for respondents to switch between questions.

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

The first step of designing a questionnaire is determining your aims.

• What topics or experiences are you studying?
• What specifically do you want to find out?
• Is a self-report questionnaire an appropriate tool for investigating this topic?

Once you’ve specified your research aims, you can operationalize your variables of interest into questionnaire items. Operationalizing concepts means turning them from abstract ideas into concrete measurements. Every question needs to address a defined need and have a clear purpose.

Step 2: Use questions that are suitable for your sample

Create appropriate questions by taking the perspective of your respondents. Consider their language proficiency and available time and energy when designing your questionnaire.

• Are the respondents familiar with the language and terms used in your questions?
• Would any of the questions insult, confuse, or embarrass them?
• Do the response items for any closed-ended questions capture all possible answers?
• Are the response items mutually exclusive?
• Do the respondents have time to respond to open-ended questions?

Consider all possible options for responses to closed-ended questions. From a respondent’s perspective, a lack of response options reflecting their point of view or true answer may make them feel alienated or excluded. In turn, they’ll become disengaged or inattentive to the rest of the questionnaire.

Step 3: Decide on your questionnaire length and question order

Once you have your questions, make sure that the length and order of your questions are appropriate for your sample.

If respondents are not being incentivized or compensated, keep your questionnaire short and easy to answer. Otherwise, your sample may be biased with only highly motivated respondents completing the questionnaire.

Decide on your question order based on your aims and resources. Use a logical flow if your respondents have limited time or if you cannot randomize questions. Randomizing questions helps you avoid bias, but it can take more complex statistical analysis to interpret your data.

Step 4: Pretest your questionnaire

When you have a complete list of questions, you’ll need to pretest it to make sure what you’re asking is always clear and unambiguous. Pretesting helps you catch any errors or points of confusion before performing your study.

Ask friends, classmates, or members of your target audience to complete your questionnaire using the same method you’ll use for your research. Find out if any questions were particularly difficult to answer or if the directions were unclear or inconsistent, and make changes as necessary.

If you have the resources, running a pilot study will help you test the validity and reliability of your questionnaire. A pilot study is a practice run of the full study, and it includes sampling, data collection , and analysis. You can find out whether your procedures are unfeasible or susceptible to bias and make changes in time, but you can’t test a hypothesis with this type of study because it’s usually statistically underpowered .

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Student’s  t -distribution
• Normal distribution
• Null and Alternative Hypotheses
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Data cleansing
• Reproducibility vs Replicability
• Peer review
• Prospective cohort study

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Placebo effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Hindsight bias
• Affect heuristic
• Social desirability bias

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analyzing data from people using questionnaires.

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. These questions are easier to answer quickly.

Open-ended or long-form questions allow respondents to answer in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. It is made up of 4 or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with 5 or 7 possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

You can organize the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex, or randomly between respondents. A logical flow helps respondents process the questionnaire easier and quicker, but it may lead to bias. Randomization can minimize the bias from order effects.

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered.

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in-person, or online between researchers and respondents. You can gain deeper insights by clarifying questions for respondents or asking follow-up questions.

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