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Unit 6: Research Design

1. What types of questions can be asked?: Are you going to be asking personal questions? Notes
Are you going to need to get lots of detail in the responses? Can you anticipate the most
frequent or important types of responses and develop reasonable closed-ended questions?
2. How complex will the questions be?: Sometimes you are dealing with a complex subject or
topic. The questions you want to ask are going to have multiple parts. You may need to
branch to sub-questions.
3. Will screening questions be needed?: A screening question may be needed to determine
whether the respondent is qualified to answer your question of interest. For instance, you
wouldn’t want to ask someone their opinions about a specific computer program without
first “screening” them to find out whether they have any experience using the program.
Sometimes you have to screen on several variables (e.g., age, gender, experience). The
more complicated the screening, the less likely it is that you can rely on paper-and-pencil
instruments without confusing the respondent.
4. Can question sequence be controlled?: Is your survey one where you can construct in
advance a reasonable sequence of questions? Or, are you doing an initial exploratory
study where you may need to ask lots of follow-up questions that you can’t easily anticipate?

5. Will lengthy questions be asked?: If your subject matter is complicated, you may need to
give the respondent some detailed background for a question. Can you reasonably expect
your respondent to sit still long enough in a phone interview to ask your question?

6. Will long response scales be used?: If you are asking people about the different computer
equipment they use, you may have to have a lengthy response list (CD-ROM drive, floppy
drive, mouse, touch pad, modem, network connection, external speakers, etc.). Clearly, it
may be difficult to ask about each of these in a short phone interview.

Content Issues

The content of your study can also pose challenges for the different survey types you might
utilize.
1. Can the respondents be expected to know about the issue?: If the respondent does not keep
up with the news (e.g., by reading the newspaper, watching television news, or talking
with others), they may not even know about the news issue you want to ask them about.
Or, if you want to do a study of family finances and you are talking to the spouse who
doesn’t pay the bills on a regular basis, they may not have the information to answer your
questions.

2. Will respondent need to consult records?: Even if the respondent understands what you’re
asking about, you may need to allow them to consult their records in order to get an
accurate answer. For instance, if you ask them how much money they spent on food in the
past month, they may need to look up their personal check and credit card records. In this
case, you don’t want to be involved in an interview where they would have to go look
things up while they keep you waiting (they wouldn’t be comfortable with that).

Bias Issues

People come to the research endeavor with their own sets of biases and prejudices. Sometimes,
these biases will be less of a problem with certain types of survey approaches.
1. Can social desirability be avoided?: Respondents generally want to “look good” in the
eyes of others. None of us likes to look like we don’t know an answer. We don’t want to
say anything that would be embarrassing. If you ask people about information that may

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