General information about questionnaires

A questionnaire is a written survey of people on a specific subject. It consists of several items or questions to be answered. Sometimes, more than one question is asked about the same matter (such as the acceptance of an e-learning program); viewed as a whole, such a grouping of questions comprises what is known as a scale. It is possible to use several scales in one questionnaire (for example, on the subjects of "acceptance," "actual use," "learning results").

Question formulation and answer formats
The items on a questionnaire can either be formulated as a question or a statement. A distinction is made between open and closed answer formats.

• Open answer formats give the participant a great degree of freedom in answering the question and are especially advantageous if a meaningful categorisation of answer options is not possible in advance. However, they have the disadvantage that they can only be analysed with considerable effort (for example, content analysis).
  
  Example: „What are the advantages of  this type of learning for you?“
  (please state briefly) ...................................……………………………………………………

• Closed answer formats specify the answer options. The different types of questions which can be distinguished are selection questions (e.g. multiple choice), agree/disagree (e.g. yes/no), and rating questions (e.g. rating scales, such as "agree, agree somewhat, disagree"). The questionnaires presented in this evaluation handbook often use items which must be answered in a rating scale.

Required resources
Questionnaires are a efficient (you can collect the opinions of many people within a short period of time) and low-cost method. The use of online questionnaires (such as Grafstat: http://www.grafstat.de/) is particularly efficient in saving postage fees and data entry.

Advantages
One advantage is that many people can be surveyed at the same time using questionnaires. At the same time, written surveys are frequently considered  more anonymous than, for example, oral surveys. This can have a positive influence on readiness to answer honestly and to think thoroughly about the questions.

Disadvantages
The disadvantages of questionnaires include the fact that the situation in which the participants fill out the questionnaire often cannot be controlled. Furthermore, hte response rates are frequently quite low, i.e. the results of the questionnaire campaign do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the whole target group. Therefore, questionnaires should be administered, if possible, be used within the context of an attended course.

Guidelines on questionnaire construction

If you want or have to develop a questionnaire you can find information at these following sites:

• Rolf Prost (ZUMA - Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen, Mannheim [Centre for surveys, methods and analyses]). His article "Question Wording - Zur Formulierung von Fragebogen-Fragen" ["Question wording - formulation of questionnaire items"] sets out the Ten Commandments for questionnaire construction, can be accessed and downloaded at:  http://www.social-science-gesis.de/Publikationen/Berichte/ZUMA_How_to/index.htm  (in German, under How-to 2).

• Werner Stangl has compiled various information about the topic of questionnaires (in German, http://www.stangl-taller.at/ARBEITSBLAETTER/FORSCHUNGSMETHODEN/Fragebogen.shtml).

• Guidelines on questionnaire construction can be found on the page of 2ask (from design through question wording to analysis, in German): http://www.2ask.de/orbiz/DigiTrade/Leitfaden-zur-Fragebogenerstellung-allgemein--389d.html