Questionnaire design: asking questions with a purpose

This guide, written by Ellen Taylor-Powell for Cooperative Extension, provides detailed guidance and examples for designing and writing questionnaires. It includes advice on constructing, formatting and pre-testing and the development of effective questions.

Contents

• Constructing a questionnaire 2
• Kinds of information 2
  • Knowledge – What people know 2
  • Beliefs – attitudes – opinions 2
  • Behaviour – What people do 3
  • Attributes – What people are 3
• Wording the questions 3
  • Types of questions 5
  • Close-ended questions with one-choice answers 7
• Formatting the questionnaire 11
• Pretesting the questionnaire 14