Methodological Challenges

Methodological Challenges

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Methodological Challenges

The questionnaire is one of the most popular tools that researchers use in surveys. It enables the researcher to collect a lot of information, which they can then use for comparison and for testing their hypothesis. This is especially the case when the researchers use multiple-choice questions. The researchers must establish their target audience, and develop the most appropriate method of approaching them. They should ensure that they are able to contact the respondents. This can be a challenging task but it improves the credibility and reliability of the research. Most people tend to underestimate the costs and time involved when conducting surveys, and they hurry through the process. One of the most important tools used in surveys is the questionnaire. All the information that the researchers obtain in the questionnaire address the research question[1]. However, most researchers tend to ask irrelevant or wrong questions, which does not contribute to realizing the researchers’ objectives. There are many methodological challenges involved when conducting surveys.

Many researchers face different problems for failing to prepare adequately. They do not conduct enough research on the subject because they do not allocate much time for it. This means that they end up limiting their alternatives, and omitting important questions[2]. This affects the results negatively, and it does not serve the purpose of the research. The researcher needs more time to gather all the information needs, define and locate the potential respondents, decide on the data collection methods, design and test the questionnaire, determine how to handle non-responses, and tabulate and analyze the data. The researcher needs to allocate enough time for these processes. Preparation and planning are key elements involved in the research process.

The way the researchers design the questionnaire determines the kind of information they get. It also determines the accuracy of the information that the respondents provide. How the researchers word the questions can determine the accuracy of the results they will get. Using fixed questions decreases the level of accuracy of the survey. In some cases, respondents often choose any answer from the given alternatives, if they do not know the answer to a specific question. Although this increases the response rates, it gives misleading results. Researchers have to ensure that the information they get is valid and reliable. The researchers have to find ways to engage the clients and ensure that they cooperate. They are able to do this by selecting a research topic that interests the participants.

Researchers need to plan the survey well by defining its purpose. They should state the purpose clearly and concisely. They should be clear about what they are intending to measure, and they should determine the variables they will need. Planning the survey will enable the researchers to determine whether there are any unique characteristics, which the respondents should have. This will help the researchers in designing the questionnaire. The researchers should ensure that they have enough finances and other resources to conduct the research. This will avoid any cases of postponing the research or stopping the research midway because of lack of resources. The researchers should know who will use the information gathered from the research, and how this information will be used. Most of the methodological challenges in surveys occur because of the limitations experienced in the structure and design of the questionnaire.

One of the most popular survey tools is the questionnaire. The questionnaire guides the researchers in determining the kind of information that they will receive from the respondents. The researchers should be careful when designing and structuring the questionnaire. The questionnaire can determine the success or failure of the study. One of the most important elements to watch out for when designing questionnaires is the wording used. Language and question structure are important, and they determine the accuracy and the usefulness of the results. The researchers should ensure that the respondents understand the questions easily. The respondents should understand the context, and the topics that the researchers are studying. The researchers should avoid ambiguity, technical jargon, sensitive questions, lengthy, and complicated questions.

Long questionnaires tend to get fewer responses than short questionnaires. It is therefore important to select the most relevant questions to include in the research. Low response rates can affect the study in a negative way, and this will not be useful in the research. Therefore, researchers should ensure that they find ways to maximize the response rate. Wording of questions depends on the audience. Some surveys target people in a particular field. In such situations, the researchers can use technical language since this is familiar to the audience. The situation is different when dealing with the public. The researchers should ensure that they use simple vocabulary and eliminate technical words. The researchers should structure the questions in a clear manner, to ensure validity in research. The title of the questionnaire is important. It should be brief, yet meaningful to the client.

There are important elements to consider concerning the language use in questionnaires. When developing questionnaires, the researchers should ensure that they do not use abbreviations or any form of colloquialisms, especially when dealing with the public. This will help in avoiding any misunderstanding and misinterpretations. People may not be aware of the exact meaning of the abbreviations, and they may have different meanings for the abbreviations. Few people understand colloquialism. People tend to interpret information depending on their experiences. Researchers should ensure that they eliminate any form of misunderstanding. One way to eliminate misunderstanding is to highlight the main points by underlining, using italics, or making the main points bold. Researchers should avoid double barrel questions[3]. Researchers should ensure that one question covers only one topic. Therefore, they should avoid using compound sentences, as this will make the wordings clearer. Asking one dimension of the question will result to clearer answers, than combining two questions in the same sentence.

Some researchers do not remember to define some problems, and this leads to confusion on the part of the respondent. Other researchers forget to provide clear instructions for the respondents. Researchers should provide clear and concise instructions on how to answer the questionnaire. The instructions must be easy to understand and the researchers must use basic and simple language. Researchers should include alternatives such as “don’t know”, “other”, and “specify” among others, as this will enable the respondents to have more options. Some researchers fail when they use poor and confused wording. Some of them use poor grammar, and this distorts research[4]. It ends up placing a high burden on the respondents, because they have to take more time trying to understand the questions. Such instances lead to low response rates. Researchers should avoid using negatives in questions because the respondents may not understand. They should ask the questions in a simple way so that they can get reliable answers.

The researchers have the task of ensuring that the wording in the questionnaire is not prejudiced, and that it will not lead to biased information. This is one of the most challenging elements in questionnaires. Designing the questionnaire in time will enable the researcher to hand it out to different groups for reviewing and evaluation. The researchers will then revise the questionnaire, based on the feedback they get, and this will eliminate the chance of getting biased information. Close-ended questions are more prone to bias because the respondents have to choose from the alternatives that the researchers provide. Some people tend to be neutral when answering the questions rather than being truthful. This tends to vary in different cultures. When collecting people from such groups it is important to use scales that do not have the option of neutrality. The researchers should be careful on the words they use, and on how they arrange the words. This will eliminate chances of bias.

The researchers should not ask leading questions, as this leads to bias. When the researchers use leading questions, they tend to suggest that the respondents should answer the questions in a certain way. Researchers should also avoid asking emotional questions. Some researchers may offend the respondents by the type of questions that they ask, and they may end up getting no answers from the respondents. Researchers should not ask loaded questions. Asking loaded questions leads to false answers[5]. Researchers should ask questions that are non- threatening. The researchers should avoid asking questions that threaten the respondents in any way. When the respondents feel threatened, or when they feel that answering the questions will lead to them facing consequences, they tend to give false information.

Another challenge that researchers face when conducting surveys is the level of awareness they have of their respondents. Researchers need to know their respondents well, as this will enable them to know the kind of questions to ask, and the language to use. This will enable them to know how they are going to frame the questions. Some of the respondents may not be learned, and this will prevent them from answering the questions in the required manner. It will also affect the results of the study. Some respondents can decide to answer the questions without understanding them well. The researchers should not pressure the respondents into answering the questions, as this can lead to biased answers. Asking too much information in a single question can cause problems for the respondents. The respondents may not understand the question, and he or she may end up giving incomplete or irrelevant answers. The researchers should avoid questions requiring the respondents to do any calculations. The respondents should ensure that the respondents have adequate knowledge to answer the questions. In some cases, respondents tend to answer questions even if they do not have all the answers. The respondents may do this because they define the question differently than the researcher does, do not want to seem ignorant, or they do not want to offend the researchers. Researchers should not assume that the respondents have all the answers to the questions.

A good and effective questionnaire is the one that helps the researchers fulfill their objectives. When designing the questionnaire, the researchers should ensure that they have laid out the objectives in a clear manner. They are able to do this when they know what purpose their research will serve, and who will use the information. Failure to identify the purpose of the research will lead to incoherence and confusion of the research. It will affect the flow and logic of the questionnaire. Researchers should ensure that the questions follow a logical order. Question order helps the flow of the survey and decreases misunderstanding. They should ensure that questions that seem similar are placed together. The researchers should group the items into coherent categories, and the items should flow smoothly. This will allow for ease of asking and answering questions.

Logical sequence and order will ensure that the respondents are more comfortable when answering the questions. Jumping from one topic to the other without a clear direction shows lack of preparedness on the part of the researchers. It shows that the researchers did not take time when developing the questionnaire, and this can reflect badly on the researchers. Having a proper order of asking questions aids the respondents’ memory. Adding transitional comments at the end of the questions results to high response rates, because it compels the respondents to continue answering the questions[6]. Although having a logical order is important, researchers should ensure that they do not end up practicing order bias. Order bias can occur when the researcher places repeating alternatives in the same order. In most cases, the respondents select the first alternative although it might not be the honest answer[7] .

Most researchers prefer close-ended multiple-choice questions because they provide an easy way for the researchers to compare different results. These types of questions also take less time to answer. However, when using close-ended questions, the people conducting the survey and developing the questionnaire must conduct thorough research so that they can get all the possible alternatives that they will include in the choices. This can take a lot of time, and it requires thorough study. When using multiple-choice format on the questionnaires, the researchers should ensure that they include all the possible alternatives. The alternatives provided should not overlap. When the researchers word the questions poorly, they get ambiguous answers. The researchers should give the respondents clear instructions that will help them in answering the questions. They should structure the questions in an easy format. The researchers should construct the questions in such a way that they correspond with the relevant answers[8]. Challenges occur when the answers are not mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive[9]. If the researchers are to answer the question by selecting one alternative when there are possible answers, then this leads to confusion. Having mutually exclusive questions eliminates ambiguity.

Some researchers face a huge problem of low response rates because of the way they structure their questions. The researchers should begin the questionnaire with interesting items, as this will provoke the respondent’s interest. The first questions should be interesting, simple to understand, and easy to answer[10]. People tend to look at the first questions before deciding whether they will proceed to answer the other questions. The researchers can hold the respondent’s interest by providing different varieties and options, and by varying the question format. The researchers should place the important questions first. Some respondents do not finish answering the questionnaire because they lack time or interest in the survey. Placing the important questions in the beginning will enable the researchers to get the relevant data. The researchers should ensure that the questionnaire has adequate room for them to answer questions and leave comments. The researchers can improve the response rate by placing questions that may embarrass the respondents or threaten them at the end of the questionnaire[11].

Analytical Soundness

There were several challenges and limitations in the questionnaire. The title of the questionnaire was brief but it was not captivating, nor did it serve to produce any meaning to the client. The researcher started by asking some potentially embarrassing questions such as the age and education level of the client. If the researchers find it necessary to ask these questions, then they should do so when they have already established a rapport with the respondents. At that time, the respondents should be comfortable to answer the questions. The researchers did not provide any interesting information at the beginning. There is evidence of order bias in the questionnaire. When selecting the different channels of news dissemination, the researchers do not interchange their alternatives. This can compel some respondents to choose the first available option. The researchers should vary their alternatives by changing the order of the options.

The researchers presuppose that the respondents have political affiliations. They expect the respondents to identify their level of political affiliations on a scale of 1-10. they also presuppose that the respondents have been politically active in the past. They do not give them the chance to state that they are not interested in politics or civil organizations. The researchers have provided few alternatives in some of the questions. For instance, when asking whether the respondents seek the news in an active or passive way. The respondents may be active or passive, depending on the situation, or on the type of news that they are searching. The researchers presuppose that the respondents use social media by asking them to list the topics that they follow on the sites. The researchers presuppose that the respondents are aware of how the social networking sites operate, when they ask them whether they use the sites to share information. The researchers should have an included a question that will determine the respondents’ knowledge of the different functions of the social media. The researchers presuppose that the respondents know what smart phone new app means. They do not explain what this means. Moreover, they have used abbreviations (app), which the respondents may not know.

In some cases, the researchers do not offer the respondents enough alternatives. The researchers offer the respondents two alternatives to state whether they receive news alerts, updates, and/or reports via email. This is a double barrel question, and the answers will not benefit the researchers in any way. The researchers ask another double barrel question when they ask the respondents how they share new reports and/or articles. The respondents may have different periods of sharing the news articles. The respondents will have a difficulty answering this question because they do not know the exact information that the researchers are expecting. One researcher may receive news alerts via email and receive reports using another form of media. Another researcher may receive reports via email at certain times. The respondents should structure the questions in a simpler and clearer way and provide more alternatives, so that they can get more informative and relevant answers. Although many questions are short, a few of them are long, and they may get fewer responses.

The researchers have provided instructions for the respondents, which helps them in answering the questions. The researchers have varied alternatives, such as when requesting the respondents to select their preferred channel of receiving news. They include options such as “not interested” and “other”. This helps the respondents to answer the questions more honestly. The researchers have used simple language, and this makes it easier for the respondents to answer the questions. The questions are few, and the respondents will not get bored or tired when answering them. Fixing the problems of presuppositions, double barrel questions, lengthy sentences, and abbreviations will improve the questionnaire, and the researchers will find the relevant answers they need. The researchers should also do more by ensuring that they hold the respondents’ interest. They can do this by changing the format of the questionnaire. They should not start by asking the respondents personal information, as this can lead to potential embarrassment.

Bibliography:

Azzara, V. Carey. Questionnaire Design for Business Research: Beyond Linear Thinking– An Interactive Approach. Mustang: Tate Publishing, 2010

William G. Zikmund, Barry J. Babin, Jon C. Carr, Mitch Griffin. Business Research Methods (with Qualtrics Printed Access Card). New York: Cengage Learning, 2012

Zikmund, G. William and Barry J. Babin. Essentials of Marketing Research. New York: Cengage Learning, 2009

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