Questionnaires: From creation to evaluation

Novice and advanced R users from all professional groups.

• CHF 600.- für Angehörige der UZH/ETH und assoziierter Institute
• CHF 800.- für Alumni der UZH/ETH, Angehörige anderer Universtitäten, Einrichtungen der öffentlichen Hand und non-profit Organisationen
• CHF 1200.- für Firmen

A questionnaire is a written list of questions that are answered by a number of people so that information can be collected from the answers (Oxford Learner's Dictionary), and represent a data collection technique that is routinely applied in psychology, sociology, health studies and elsewhere. The obtained information is used to construct new theories (Context of Discovery) or to confirm existing theories (Context of Justification). Questionnaire data depend on self-report, that is, on what people are willing and able to convey about themselves or about others (“other-report”). This course explains the basics of scientific questionnaire construction on the basis of three rules for good design practice: Every question and every answer option must be understood by the researcher and the interviewees in the exact same way (Rule of uniform interpretation); respondents must neither purposefully nor unwittingly be directed to a ‘correct’ response by priming, answer formatting, or other cues and information supplied prior or during the interview (Rule of no prompting); and the burden for the interviewee should be to retrieve the truest response, not to try understand the questions and procedure for responding, or to try to hold out through the interview (Rule of minimizing burden).

Theoretical sessions will be alternated with practical sessions, where existing datasets created by questionnaire research (e.g., European Social Survey, World Values Study) will be analyzed in R and in terms of interesting research questions. Topics to be covered include (Likert) scale construction including a discussion of the (limited) use of Cronbach’s alpha, validation, measurement invariance, selection and impact of response options for questionnaire items, criteria for selecting an appropriate mode (self-administered, interviewer-administered), common method bias, and multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) approaches.

About the teacher
Jarl Kennard Kampen (PhD) teaches research methods and statistics for BSc, MSc and PhD students of very diverse backgrounds (e.g., environmental science, social sciences, health studies) in Wageningen University (The Netherlands) and Antwerp University (Belgium). His experience and expertise covers both quantitative and qualitative research methodology. He provides methodological and statistical support in short, medium and long-term interdisciplinary research collaborations. Jarl publishes regularly in the theoretical (statistics, methodology) and applied scientific literature.