Assignment 2: Designing a Questionnaire

Assignment Instructions

• Your goal in Assignment 2 is to design a questionnaire.
  
  
• Read the requirements carefully and note the marks awarded for each section. Use these marks as a guide to the amount of time and attention you should expect to allocate to each section when preparing your assignment. Assignment 2 has a total of 100 marks.
  
  
• Assignment 2 should be no longer than 15 pages, double spaced, using a 12-point font. Papers over this length may be penalized or returned to the student for further editing. The title page and reference page do not count toward the page limit.
   

Requirements

• The purpose of this assignment is for you to create a questionnaire. You will select a research problem or question that could be analyzed using a questionnaire.

• The objective of this exercise is to have a fully developed questionnaire. Follow the design principles outlined on pages 193–207 of the textbook and the instructions below to create your questionnaire. (Note that Exhibit 8.1 on page 193 lists seven steps, but for this assignment, you are ot required to complete Steps 5 or 7). The title page contains the course name, the title of your study, your name and student ID number, and the date submitted.

Starting point	Introduce the case and describe the research problem(s). What do you hope to learn from this questionnaire?
Step 1	Confirm research objectives. Ensure that the objectives clearly state why raw data must be collected and describe the research questions that will be addressed. List the objectives in order of their relative importance. Establish a research hypothesis for each objective.
Step 2	Select an appropriate data collection method. What are the data requirements? How should this questionnaire be distributed (e.g., by mail or person administered)? What sample of respondents will you use? Explain your rationale.
Step 3	Develop specific questions and scale measurement formats. Explain why you need each question in the questionnaire (e.g., what research objective does it address?), what measurement scale you will use (e.g., open-ended or closed-ended formats; nominal, interval, ordinal, or ratio structure), and what type of data will be collected. Avoid poor questions and ensure that every question has a purpose.
Step 4	Create a draft version of your questionnaire (include this in your assignment), and then evaluate the questionnaire and layout using the criteria in Lesson 8 (including the suggestions in the lesson notes and in Chapter 8 of the textbook). Does the questionnaire meet all stated research objectives? Are the questions correctly ordered? Report your evaluation of the draft questionnaire’s layout and briefly describe any changes you made and why you made them.
Step 5	Obtain initial client approval (you are not required to complete this step for Assignment 2).
Step 6	Pre-test, revise, and finalize the questionnaire. Enlist at least two friends to fill out the questionnaire, and then ask them to tell you about any difficulties they encountered in answering questions. Describe these difficulties and what you did to address them and include the final version of the questionnaire in the assignment (there will be two versions of the questionnaire in the assignment: a rough draft version and the final version after Steps 4 and 6 are considered).
Step 7	Implement the survey (you are not required to complete this step for Assignment 2).

Evaluation

• Use the following marks breakdown to help you structure your paper. Consider how much each section is worth when preparing your report.

Marks are allocated as follows:

Title page (containing course number and name, assignment number,       5 marks
the title of your study, your name and student ID number, and
date submitted)                                                                                  

Introduction, purpose of study, and problem definition	10 marks
Describe specific research objectives and information/data requirements	10 marks
Describe the survey method and sample frame	15 marks
Develop questionnaire (specific questions and measurement scales) and explain how the questionnaire addresses research objectives	30 marks
Pre-test and revise the questionnaire	10 marks
Final questionnaire format and layout	10 marks
Professionalism (document appearance, spelling, grammar)	10 marks
Total	100 marks