Introduction/Overview

Comments from participants about the course:

“The course was thoroughly engaging and informative. The instructor’s enthusiasm for the subject is truly contagious and I find myself eager to begin applying this theory to my own work.”

“The trainer was fantastic - incredibly nice and knowledgeable.”

“The course was really great and I enjoyed it a lot.”

This course looks at questionnaire design in a new way with the aim of improving the quality of the data collected. This course is NOT about learning to write survey questions, but instead focuses on alternative tools and alternative methods of data collection. For example, instead of making improvements to question comprehension from a cognitive side, the linguistic side will be explored including a workshop with online tools (e.g. the British National Corpus, Flesch-Kincaid readability and free Chat GPT). The next part of the course focuses on the lack of accuracy in factual retrospective self-reported data and possible solutions through decomposition; event history calendars; internet enabled devices, wearables, apps and sensors; and additional tasks on mobile phones.

The course then goes more deeply into the unreliability of single subjective survey questions with the solutions of a factorial (vignette) approach and multi-item scales.  

Learning objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Be familiar with the use of linguistic tools for developing survey questions
• Be knowledgeable about how human memory works, what the implications of that are to questionnaire design and alternative methods of data collection that either complement or REPLACE the survey questionnaire
• Be familiar with two solutions to the unreliability of single subjective survey questions: vignettes and multi-item scales

Topics

• Four cognitive stages a respondent passes through in answering a survey question
• Comprehension from the linguistic side using online tools
• Workshop 1 - Improving a survey question using online linguistic tools
• How free ChatGPT would improve that survey question?
• Some issues with factual questions and more about memory
• Workshop 2 - Memory experience
• Basic aids to recall
• Alternative methods of data collection to minimise memory error: Part 1 - Decomposition and calendars
• Alternative methods of data collection to minimise memory error: Part 2 - Event history calendars
• Alternative methods of data collection to minimise memory error: Part 3 - Internet Enabled Devices, Wearables, Apps and Sensors; Additional Tasks on Mobile Phones
• Workshop 3 - Event history calendar experience
• Workshop 4 - Critiquing a survey question posing memory difficulties as well as other issues
• What do subjective question measure? Stability and instability of attitudes
• Workshop 5 - Critiquing a subjective question
• Alternative methods of data collection: factorial surveys / vignettes
• Workshop 6 - On vignettes
• Alternative methods of data collection: Designing multi-item scales
• Workshop 7 - Writing multi-item scale

Who will benefit

Participants wanting to improve the quality of their survey questions and/or wanting to further their knowledge about alternative tools and methods of data collection for questionnaire design.

Course tutor

Dr Pamela Campanelli is an international trainer, survey methods specialist and consultant. She is also a UK Chartered Statistician and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Prior to creating her own business, The Survey Coach, 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 regularly teaches short courses on various survey related topics in the UK and abroad for government departments, survey research companies, universities, as well as for various other institutions and businesses.

She believes in delivering courses that are lively and engaging, foster an informal and interactive atmosphere, communicate concepts in a straightforward and accessible way, illustrate the material through the use of 'real life' examples, and provide workshops to put theory into practice.

  This course contributes 6 hours to the MRS CPD programme

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

Part 1 - 14 October - 12.30 pm to 4.45 pm

Part 2 - 15 October - 12.30 pm to 4.45 pm

Part 3 - 16 October - 12.30 pm to 4.45 pm

Looking to book for four or more people from your organisation? Contact [email protected] to ask about our in-house courses.