Introduction/Overview

Rubbish in, rubbish out – have you ever discovered too late that your questions did not deliver useful or useable data? Learn the art of writing effective questions and combining them into a meaningful questionnaire. Drawing on both experience and research findings from questionnaire design experiments, this course is full of practical advice.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will

• Have a greater awareness of the different aspects involved in writing good survey questions and questionnaires
• Have the tools to critique existing surveys
• Have the knowledge to be able to write their own high quality questionnaires

Topics

• General principles of designing questions (e.g., getting started with new questionnaires, common pitfalls to avoid, problematic formats)
• An exercise in critique existing survey questions
• An exercise in writing new questions
• Creating the questionnaire as a whole
• Special issues for web surveys as opposed to other methods of quantitative data collection
• Some essentials of testing your questionnaire

Who will benefit?

• The course will benefit anyone who wishes to conduct their own survey or commission a survey
• The course is suitable for people new to questionnaire design as well as those who have experience, but would like to brush up on the latest thinking

Learning outcome

Course Tutor

The day will be led by Dr Pamela Campanelli. Pamela is a Survey Methods Consultant, Chartered Statistician, Chartered Scientist and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from the London School of Economics, and an M.A. in survey research methods and B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she was a Research Associate at the at the University of Michigan, a Survey Statistician at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Chief Research Officer at the UK Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, and a Research Director at the Survey Methods Centre at the National Centre for Social Research, London.

Her main interests and publications are in the study of survey error and data quality issues, with special emphasis on questionnaire design, question testing strategies, survey sampling, weighting and survey analysis. In addition to her consultancy work, she has led a UK ESRC grant on survey nonresponse and been a team member of a UK ESRC grant to explore measurement error in mixed mode surveys. She has taught courses across the UK as well as internationally for government departments, survey companies, universities and for various other institutions. .

Cancellation policy: Full refund if cancelled 21 days or more from the course date. No refund if cancelled 20 days or fewer from the course date.