Questionnaire

                                A questionnaire is a list of questions used to collect data about someone or something. It is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions that aims to collect information from a respondent. It is used to gather data from respondents about their attitudes, experiences, or opinions. Questionnaire can be used to collect quantitative or qualitative information. Questionnaire is commonly used in market research as well as in the social and health sciences. A questionnaire is a specific tool or instrument for collecting the data.

 

Questionnaire Methods

                Questionnaire can be self-administrated, or researcher administrated. Self-administrated questionnaires are common because they are inexpensive and easy to implement. Researcher administrated questionnaires allow deeper insights.

Self-administrated questionnaires can be-

·     Cost effective

·     Easy to administer

·     Large groups

·     Anonymous and suitable for sensible topics

·     Self-paced

Researcher administrated questionnaire can be-

·     Help you ensure the respondent are representative of your target audience

·     Allow clarifications of unclear questions and answers

·     Have high response rate

 

Types of Questionnaires

                Open-ended questionnaires allow respondents to give answers in their own words. Because there are no restrictions. It is unrestricted.

                Close-ended questionnaires offer a fixed set of choices to select from. It is structured in nature.

                Good questions need to be understood by all respondents. Questions wording can influence your respondents’ answers.

·     Use clear language

·     Use balanced framing

·     Avoid leading questions

·     Keep your questions focused

Importance of Questionnaire

                Questions are considered to be of vital importance for research, feedback, and control. A survey without a questionnaire is as incomplete as a dish without ingredients.

                A questionnaire is an effective tool to measure the attitudes. Beliefs, behaviour, preference, opinion, and intentions of a relatively large number of people.

 

Advantages

·     Inexpensive

·     Generate a large amount of data

·     Easy to understand and easy to respond

·     The responses can be easily quantified

·     Easy to analyse the result

·     It allows to maintain their anonymity

·     It is not necessary to have a personal touch

 

Disadvantages

·     Respondents are sometimes dishonest while answering questions

·     When it comes to open-end questions, it becomes difficult to understand and interpret the response

·     It is not the perfect tool to know the feelings and emotions

·     Lack of personalization demotivate the respondents

 

Anecdotal Record

 

                An anecdotal record is an observation that is written like a short story. They are descriptions of incidents or events that are important to the person observing. Anecdotal records are short, objective and as accurate as possible.

                “Anecdotal record is a record of some significant item of conduct, a record of an episode in the life of students, a word picture of the student in action, a word snapshot at the moment of the incident, any narration of events in which may be significant about his personality.”- Randall

                Anecdotal record is an informal device used by the teacher to record behaviour of students as observed by him from time to time. It provides a lasting record of behaviour which may be useful later in contributing to a judgement about a student.

Merits

·     Supplements and validates of other structured instruments.

·     Provision of insight into total behavioural incidents.

·     Needs no special training.

·     Use of formative feedback.

·     Economical and easy to develop.

·     Open ended and can catch unexpected events.

·     Can select behaviours or events of interest and ignore others or can sample a wide range of behaviours (different times, environments, and people).

 

Demerits

·     If carelessly recorded, the purpose will not be fulfilled.

·     Only records events of interest to the person doing the observing.

·     Quality of the record depends on the memory of the person doing the observation.

·     Incidents can be taken out of context.

·     Subjectivity.

·     Lack of standardization.

·     Difficulty in scoring.

·     Time consuming.

·     May miss out on recording specific types of behaviour.

·     Limited application.