Questionnaire Design Insights
The questionnaire design stage is absolutely essential to any successful research study. The goal of the questionnaire is to translate the required information into a set of specific questions that members of our target population can and will answer.
The most important factor in developing a questionnaire is having a true understanding of the research problem and study objectives. This would include having a list of business decisions that are going to be made with the results.
With this as our foundation we use “reverse engineering” to design the questionnaire. By reverse engineering we mean specifying the information that must be presented to answer the key research questions. We also determine what advanced analytical methods will be required during the data analysis phase, since they often require that the data take on certain properties. We stress the importance of not force-fitting a problem into a methodology. Rather, we believe in letting the research objectives drive the study design and subsequent analysis.