Page 126 - DMGT209_QUANTITATIVE_TECHNIQUES_II

Unit 7: Sources and Methods of Data Collection

(c) After discussing with several sales people, the sales manager suspects that the morale Notes
of the sales force is low, and wants to confirm this by using an employee morale
questionnaire.
(d) A firm marketing toffee has two alternative wrapper designs for the product and is
wonders, which one will result in higher sales.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. …………and ………………….are two broad approaches available for primary data
collection.
6. In…………………, the actual behaviour or phenomenon of interest is observed.
7. …………….is used to analyse those data which cannot be quantified.
8. Unstructured, direct interview is known as a ………….interview.

7.3 Questionnaire Designing

Questionnaires are an inexpensive way to gather data from a potentially large number of
respondents. Often they are the only feasible way to reach a number of reviewers large enough
to allow statistically analysis of the results. A well-designed questionnaire that is used effectively
can gather information on both the overall performance of the test system as well as information
on specific components of the system. If the questionnaire includes demographic questions on
the participants, they can be used to correlate performance and satisfaction with the test system
among different groups of users. A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series
of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents.
Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the
case. The questionnaire was invented by Sir Francis Galton.
!

Caution It is important to remember that a questionnaire should be viewed as a multi-
stage process beginning with definition of the aspects to be examined and ending with
interpretation of the results.
Every step needs to be designed carefully because the final results are only as good as the
weakest link in the questionnaire process. Although questionnaires may be cheap to administer
compared to other data collection methods, they are every bit as expensive in terms of design
time and interpretation.
Questionnaires have advantages over some other types of surveys in that they are cheap, do not
require as much effort from the questioner as verbal or telephone surveys, and often have
standardized answers that make it simple to compile data. However, such standardized answers
may frustrate users. Questionnaires are also sharply limited by the fact that respondents must be
able to read the questions and respond to them. Thus, for some demographic groups conducting
a survey by questionnaire may not be practical.

Notes As a type of survey, questionnaires also have many of the same problems relating
to question construction and wording that exist in other types of opinion polls.

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