Questionnaires can be used to gather data for research studies. Some questionnaires include open and closed questions and others mix both. Questions that are open give respondents the freedom to respond in their own words. Closed questions provide a list of predetermined answers that they can select from. Questionnaires can be administered in several ways, including through face-to-face interviews, phone calls, postal mail, or online.
Surveys using online questionnaires have become more frequent, but it’s important to make sure that the information collected are valid and reliable. To do this, the researcher should be able to accurately measure responses and keep track of the amount of people who fill out the survey. The researcher should also be able to determine the potential reasons why a person might not respond and address these issues (e.g. sampling bias).
Online questionnaires are also cheaper than traditional methods. This is why they are a popular alternative to traditional questionnaire based research. This method is not without difficulties. Online questionnaires can be difficult to analyze in terms their validity and accuracy, and may have an impact on social desireability of the respondent samples.
There are numerous ways to minimize the negative impact of these limitations on online questionnaires and web-based experiments. This article will discuss a few specific methods that can help researchers improve the accuracy and quality of their online questionnaires like: (i) paying participants immediately after they have completed the questionnaire results in less responses than waiting for all responses or a middle procedure; (iii) asking participants to enter their names for receipt preparation doesn’t reduce or improve the social acceptance of responses and (iv) framing the fixed portion of the participant’s payment as being « for taking the survey » and offering progress feedback increases answer quality.
