Introduction/Overview

Comments from USA participants about the course:

“I truly enjoyed the training. It was stimulating, fun, and went by so fast!”

“It was a terrific course and I have learned helpful new information to bring back to my group!”

It is important to have knowledge of questionnaire design before taking this advanced course. In particular to be aware of the four cognitive stages of answering a survey question (comprehension, recall, judgment and response) and issues with factual questions as well as subjective ones.

Survey expert, Dr. Pamela Campanelli, is bringing this popular University of Michigan Survey Research Center course to the SRA for the first time. It is designed to go beyond common questionnaire design knowledge. You will learn more deeply how respondents actually interact with your survey questions and translations of survey questions. In addition, you will discover issues that arise for factual and subjective questions, while finding out about some online tools for language analysis. A variety of pitfalls and their solutions will be covered, from those focusing on question wording changes to alternative methods of data collection.

The course is highly interactive and there are workshop sessions (practice exercises in small breakout groups) throughout.

Learning objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Have a thorough understanding of a range of issues in advanced questionnaire design
• Have knowledge of the many design pitfalls, and their solutions
• Be able to make informed choices about when an alternative method of data collection should be used
• Use the course material to inform the collection of better quality quantitative data

Topics

• The linguistic side of survey question comprehension will be explored (this includes the use of several online tools and a workshop using these tools).
• Short overview of factual questions
• Different ways respondents’ memories work and solutions to the problems these pose (workshop on how we remember)
• Autobiographical memory
• Respondent telescoping of reference periods, and solutions
• Understanding what a quasi-fact is and how to improve measurement of it
• Workshop on factual questions
• Alternatives to questionnaires when memory issues are present: Event history calendars and internet enabled devices
• Short overview of subjective questions
• Understanding attitude consistency and inconsistency and emotionally charged words affecting question balance
• Workshop on subjective questions
• Problems with satisfaction and other customer experience metrics, and their solutions
• Alternatives to questionnaires for subjective data collection: Factorial surveys and multi-item scales
• Workshop in creating a multi-item scale
• Tips for translating survey questions into other languages

Who will benefit

People with a good basic understanding of questionnaire design who want to improve their questionnaires, or who want advanced knowledge of these topics for critiquing others’ work.

Course tutor

Dr Pamela Campanelli is a Survey Methods Consultant and runs The Survey Coach business. She is also a Chartered Statistician, Chartered Scientist and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has worked at the University of Michigan, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, ISER at the University of Essex, and NatCen Social Research. She has both led and been a team member on ESRC grants (one on survey nonresponse and one on measurement error in mixed mode surveys). She regularly teaches short courses in the UK and abroad for government departments, survey research companies, universities, as well as for various other institutions and businesses.

  This course contributes 6 hours to the MRS CPD programme

n.b. This course runs over three consecutive mornings:

Part 1 - 9 February - 09.00 am to 1.30 pm

Part 2 - 10 February - 09.00 am to 1.30 pm

Part 3 - 11 February - 09.00 am to 1.30 pm