Questionnaire Design (Survey Design)

Questionnaire design is the process by which a questionnaire is developed. Good questionnaire design involves many steps, each of which increases the validity of the statistics created from the data collected through the questionnaire. A typical set of questionnaire-design steps is as follows:
  1. Development of the research questions. This is one of the most important steps. If the research questions are well defined, then every question on the questionnaire will directly address one of the research questions.

  2. Initial research, expert interviews. This step is necessary if the questionnaire designer does not have enough information to begin.

  3. Preliminary draft of questionnaire created.

  4. Expert review occurs.

  5. Revision of the questionnaire, based on the comments of the experts. Sometimes, another cycle of the previous step and this step is required if the experts find many problems in the questionnaire.

  6. Translation and back-translation. This is only necessary for surveys that will be administered to respondents who do not speak the primary language in which the questionnaire was written. It is highly recommended that translation occur during questionnaire design, rather than in the field while the survey is being administered.

  7. Revision of the questionnaire in all languages, as necessary. It may be necessary to repeat the previous step and this step until each back-translation matches the original language version.

  8. Testing via cognitive interviewing, in all language versions.

  9. Revision of the questionnaire, based on the results of the cognitive interviewing. The previous step and this step may be repeated for multiple "rounds" of testing.

  10. Language decentering, or simultaneous back-translation of all language versions of the questionnaire, for final comparison across all languages and the initial language. Revision occurs at this step as necessary, with a focus on conceptual equivalence across languages.

  11. Interviewer training. Issues raised by the interviewers as they are trained are noted and the questionnaire is revised, if necessary.

  12. Field testing. Major problems with the questionnaire will probably not be found at this point if all previous steps were taken, but any major problems found may involve returning to a previous step in the questionnaire-design process.

  13. Final revisions.
At that point, the questionnaire is finalised and printed, and the fieldwork for the survey begins.