PSYCH 495/506: Questionnaire Design

Fall 2001

TIME/PLACE: Mon & Wed: 6-7:25, St Joseph 325, 3 Credits, 29 meetings

William F. Moroney, Ph.D., CPE

Office # 937-229-2767, St Joe's, RM 305.

Home #: 937-885-7649, before 9 PM, please

E-MAIL: Moroney@udayton.edu; Mail Box in St Joe's 325

Web Site: http://academic.udayton.edu/williammoroney/

Office Hours: Mon & Wed: 1:15-2:00; Prefer meetings arranged by appointment.

Graduate Assistant: To be announced.

TEXTS:

Required:

Alreck, P.L., & Settle, R.B. (1995). The survey research handbook. Chicago,IL: Irwin.

Recommended:

Dillman, D.A. .(2000). Mail and internet surveys: The tailored design method.( 2nd edition) . NY, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Provided:

Moroney, W.F., & Cameron, J.A. (2001). The design of questionnaires and surveys.

( Formerly Questionnaire Design and Use: A Primer for Practitioners)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Students will learn about critical issues in questionnaire design and use, the advantages/ disadvantages of questionnaires, types of questionnaires, questionnaire development strategies, scale selection, and how to evaluate questionnaires. Students will develop, test and evaluate a questionnaire in a domain of interest to them. Depending on the size of the effort and the skills needed, students may work in teams.

Prerequisite: Statistics PSY 216, MTH 107, or an equivalent, or approval of instructor.

OBJECTIVES:

This course will provide you with strategies for designing questionnaires. You will be exposed to critical issues in questionnaire design and use, the advantages/ disadvantages of questionnaires, types of questionnaires, questionnaire development strategies, scale selection, and how to evaluate questionnaires. A portion of the course will be devoted to the development and use of questionnaires on the Internet.
You will be provided with a flow chart of the questionnaire design process and a checklist to evaluate the quality of questionnaires. You will evaluated and improve problematic questionnaires..
You will apply the principles you learned by developing a questionnaire designed to meet the needs of a specific group. The topic for the questionnaire will be agreed upon..
You will also apply the principles you learned in the development of a questionnaire in critiquing questionnaires developed by your classmates
You will identify sources of questionnaires.
You will attain a greater appreciation of the complexity involved in properly developing and employing questionnaires.
Application rather than theory will be emphasized.

Mini-Paper

Each student or a team will write a mini-paper on an assigned topic and present it to the class. Students may also propose alternate paper topics

Possible topics include:

Semantic Differential (including sources for choosing bipolar terms, and appropriate uses of semantic differential and data reporting).
Customer Satisfaction (strategies for collecting data)
A comparison of software packages used to generate questionnaires.
Evaluate the new SPSS survey tool (repeat last years study).
Reported behavior vs actual behavior (drugs, alcohol, smoking, caffeine, sex, etc)
Contrast with Nielson's view on surveys (utest@hubcap.clemson.edu).
Review of Turner, Ku and Rogers (1998), Science, 280, p 867-873. Truthfulness and PC reporting using Science Citation index.
Develop flow/ghant/ decision making chart of questionnaire development process including electronic surveys.
Readability of Questionnaires. Is it the same as readability in general ?
Locate sources of checklists/ Questionnaires
Apply Neilson's principles on Web design to Web-Based questionnaires. What are the rules? What guidance is applicable ? Format: consider a mini--Standard). Perhaps develop a checklist like the Total Questionnaire Management (TQM) form.

I also have a number of theses ideas and a focused mini-paper would be worth considering as a way to identify a potential thesis.
Presentations should be made using Powerpoint, and copies of the slides should be provided as Notes (3 per page) to the rest of the class. Be sure to include your references at the end of the Powerpoint material.

Questionnaire Topics : Students are strongly encouraged to develop a questionnaire in a domain of personal interest to them. Possible topics include:

Customer Satisfaction among First Year Purchasers of Computers.
Usability Questionnaires (who has them?, How are they used , MOEs?)
Faculty Satisfaction with book store service
Student satisfaction with bookstore VR site (First year students ordering books on line)
Book Store improvements ( service, layout, new/used books,etc)
Desirability of One-Stop Service location at UD.
Jefferson Township (determine perception of schools in township, Develop a data collection tool for a repeated measures experiment).
Graduating Senior evaluations of undergraduate programs. ( Psych Dept has a working model)
Evaluation of Integrated Natural Sciences Program.
Psychology GA/Faculty usage & expectations.
Other topics may be identified by UD faculty/staff, I mention those opportunities in class.

Evaluation:

1. You will be evaluated on the following elements:

Quality of your questionnaire. (including evaluation by customers) 50%
Quality of your mini paper 20%
Quality of your presentation 10%
Participation in class and in evaluating and improving the work of others. 10%
Miscellaneous readings: 10%
Readers Digest Oct 99 vs Gallup Poll
Gallup Poll Tuesday (everybody will do one)
Turner, Ku and Rogers (1998),Science, 280, p 867-873
Mini-assignments: e.g. review of questionnaires on the WWW

GENERAL COMMENTS:

1. This class requires considerable interaction and participation if we are to achieve our goals.

2. Because of the project nature of this course, I will meet with individual investigators at the end of each class. This is in addition to other meetings including those with sponsors. We will also schedule meetings as necessary to review paper outlines, discuss progress, etc. Investigators will need to develop a time table for producing the deliverables.

3. The course will have 5 parts which proceed in the following order:

Questionnaire Design Lectures ( ~ 10-12 hrs)
Reviews of existing questionnaires (Objective: Identify problem(s) and propose solution(s).
Review & critique of draft questionnaires produced by members of the class. ( A good learning experience that will be distributed throughout Oct, Nov & Dec).
Paper submission and presentations (two 20 minute presentations/class starting on Nov 7^th.
Your questionnaire & presentation (exact date to be agreed upon, plan to share "lessons learned" with the class.

4. I am presently working on a book on Questionnaire Design and some of the work we do in this class may be incorporated into the text. Credit will be given as due.

5. I expect that some of the proposed topics may lead to publishable material, we will discuss the specifics of author credits after topics are selected.

FYI: Last years class resulted in:

one thesis,
one publication, a second will be reviewed shortly,
2 presentations at the Standar Symposium, and a third will be made in 2002.
Additional presentation(s) based on the results of the 2001 survey will also be presented at the Standar 2001 symposium.

6. John Zogby ( Pollster for NYTIMES, CNN,etc) will speak at UD on Friday 21 September, we will attend his presentation. Exact times are still to be determined..

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES:

1. Learning should be exciting and challenging. Learning requires work. I will attempt to provide you some of the excitement and challenges; I hope you will add to the excitement and provide challenges. We will all work and develop our questionnaire design skills.

2. For this class to succeed it is essential that you will read the assigned materials, prior to the appropriate class. Assignments will be specified at the end of each class.

3. There will no classes on September 3^rd (Labor day), November 8^th (Columbus Day) , or October 10 when I'm at the annual meeting of the Human factors and Ergonomics Society