Questionnaire Research

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. It is basically a list of questions that are to be completed by a person.
There are two ways a questionnaire can be completed;

• Postal questionnaire; where the respondent is to complete the questionnaire personally and by themselves.
• Structured interview; where the respondent is asked questions verbally by an interviewer.

A questionnaire needs to be designed well and be easy to use. Objectives need to be clarified, samples need to be defined and then appropriate and relevant questions need to be chosen.

Questions in a questionnaire can be either;

• Closed; where the respondent is limited either a 'yes' or a 'no', or,
• Open; where the respondent is allowed the opportunity to choose and answer from a pre made list.
• Lickert scale; where the answers the respondents must choose from are 'strongly disagree', 'agree', 'neutral', 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree'.
• Semantic-Differential scale; this is where a table is used and on side is a word describing the answer and on the other side is the opposite word. Respondent must circle a number in between the words closest to how they feel about the question. For example,
  

• Happy	1	2	3	Unhappy
  Like	1	2	3	Dislike

Closed questions allow the respondent very little range in to which make their mind up and deliver an answer. Closed questions tends to collect quantitative data.
Open questions doesn't provide the respondent with a collection of answers to choose from. It requires them to answer the questions using their own words. This collects qualitative data.

Advantages of questionnaires are that it is easy to gather information from a large number of people quickly and efficiently. The questionnaires are pretty easy to create. It is easy to go through all the used questionnaires and make an understanding of it because everyone answered the same question. It is fair.
Disadvantages of questionnaires is that it is difficult to explore complex issues. It is also difficult to see whether the answers were legitimate or not. All the respondents may not fully understand the questions therefore have a different approach to it.

The questionnaire I constructed for the magazine which is going to be produced will help me decide what I should include on the content of the magazine. It will influence my end product because it help target the right market of audience.

There are four questions in the survey, all are more or less closed answer questions. Ten people will be answering this questionnaire.

>Monisha