Questionnaire

• Questionnaire is described as “a document that contains a set of questions, the answers to which are to be provided personally by the respondents”.
• Questionnaire is the structured set of questions usually sent by mail, though sometimes it is delivered by hand also. The hand delivery could be at home, school/college, office, organization, and so on.
• The importance of the survey is explained to the respondents through a covering letter. Usually, a self-addressed stamped envelop is sent to the respondents along with the questionnaire to reduce their expenses.
• The follow up request for returning the questionnaire is made through repeated letters.

Questionnaire is used as a tool when

• Very large samples are desired,
• Costs have to be kept low,
• the target groups who are likely to have high response rates are specialized,
• ease of administration is necessary, and
• moderate response rate is considered satisfactory.

Following guidelines should be followed for framing and asking questions

• Questions should be clear and unambiguous: The question like, “What do you think about the proposed peace plan for Kashmir?” may not be clear to respondent who does not know anything about the peace plan.
• Questions should be relevant: Sometimes the respondents are asked to give opinions on issues on which they have never given any thought, e.g., “What is your opinion on the economic policies of the BJP, the Congress and the CPI parties?” Such questions are bound to be disregarded by the respondents.
• Questions should be short: Long and complicated items are to be avoided. The respondent should be able to read an item quickly, understand its meaning and think of an answer without difficulty.
• Negative questions should be avoided: The appearance of a negation in the question paves the way for easy misinterpretation. For example, asking to agree or disagree with the statement, “India should not recognize the military rule in Fiji”, a sizeable portion of the respondents will not read the word ‘not’ and answer on that basis.
• Biased terms should be avoided: Prejudice affects the answers. For example, the question, “Have military rulers in the neighbouring country always hampered our country’s progress?” may encourage some respondents to give particular response more than other questions do.
• Respondents must be competent to answer: The researcher should always ask himself whether the respondents he has chosen are competent enough to answer questions on the issue of research. For example, asking daily wage labourers to give their views on ‘communal violence’ may not be rational. Similarly, asking students to indicate the manner in which university’s total income ought to be spent will be wrong because students may not have fairly good knowledge of the nature of activities and the costs involved in them.
• Respondents must be willing to answer: Many a time people are unwilling to share opinions with others, e.g., asking Muslims about Pakistan’s attitude towards Muslims in India.

Types of Questions

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary:

• Primary Questions elicit information directly related to the research topic: Each question provides information about a specific aspect of the topic. For example, for determining the type of family (whether it is husband-dominant, wife dominant, equalitarian), the question “who takes decisions in your family” is a primary question.
• Secondary questions elicit information which do not relate directly to the topic, i.e., the information is of secondary importance. They only guard the truthfulness of the respondents, e.g., in the above topic, the question “who decides the nature of gift to be given in marriage to family relative” or “who finally selects the boy with whom the daughter is to be married” are the secondary questions.
• The tertiary questions are of neither primary nor of secondary importance. These only establish a framework that allows convenient data collection and sufficient information without exhausting or biasing the respondent.