BUS3059 Week 1 Discussion

Designing the Research Study

Now that you have learned about all of the factors that must be considered in designing questions within a survey, it is time to talk about putting such questions

together into a logical whole. The survey itself is a collection of questions that have been properly formatted and sequenced in a logical way.

First, be sure to provide clear and complete instructions to both the subject and the interviewer who may be presenting the survey to the subject. For example,

explain in the instructions to the interviewer how to stop an interview in case a participant does not want to continue.

Next, be sure to ask simpler and more engaging questions at the beginning of the survey. If a subject is asked the most challenging questions at the beginning of a

survey, the subject may not wish to continue. Place such challenging questions closer to the end of the survey.

Finally, related questions should be grouped together in the survey. If multiple questions deal with the same topic, these questions should be presented to the

subject sequentially. Asking a subject to jump between topics leads to confusion and may produce erroneous data or discourage the subject from completing the

survey.

Even with a researcher's best efforts, there may be some confusion as to what a particular survey question is asking. In order to eliminate wasted time and effort, survey items should be pretested, in order to ensure that such confusion does not exist. By pretesting the questions of the survey, confusing questions can be

identi�ed and corrected before most of the data collection for the business research project begins.