A questionnaire is a list of questions asking about a situation from all possible aspects. Qualitative as well as quantitative data, both types of data can be collected by using structure or unstructure questionnaires. Likewise, both statistical and non-statistical methods of analysis can be use to analyze questionnaire data. For example, if you want to find the circumstances of a disaster by collecting information from people who lived through it, questionnaires data can be helpful. Similarly, if you want to collect information about particular age groups spending more than five hours per day on YouTube videos, then quantitative questionnaire data will be more useful. In this article, we will discuss some ways that may help you in increasing the quality of data collected by using a questionnaire:
Tips to improve the quality of data collected through the questionnaire:
First of all, the quality of questionnaire data can be improve by putting more effort into the research questions formulation step. These are research questions that can suggest questions to be add to the questionnaire to ask from respondents. Therefore, if you feel any problem with the research questions formulation process, you must seek expert dissertation writers UK help.
Additionally, one question must focus on one aspect of a research problem. Thus, in this way, the quality of data collected by the questionnaire will automatically reach the marked standards. This tip is helping you improve the quality of data even before collecting it. Likewise, the following are some quality improvement tips that you can follow before and after collecting the desired data.
- Make questions by keeping in mind your target audience: It will help you only add questions that a target audience can answer without being biased.
- Define standards of quality for questionnaire data before striving for it: It is important as you cannot touch the quality standards if you are not clear about what to achieve.
- The quality of questionnaire data is largely determined by your ability to link the identified variables: Yes, the formula to collect quality data through a questionnaire is quite simple. That is, the more precisely you ask or link variables in questionnaires, the better will be the questionnaire data quality.
- Try to avoid the overuse of some common words: The quality of data also decreases when all questions ask more and less the same aspect of a problem under study. It results in a pile of similar data without giving valuable information, thus, compromising the quality of overall results as well.
- Collect data only after measuring the intellectual level of respondents:
This method is more helpful if you collect data by physically offering the questionnaires to the researchers. In the case of using electronic mode for the distribution of information among participants, you can also arrange a short interview via WhatsApp or other mediums to judge the intellectual level of respondents. In either case, the mental status of respondents has a great effect on the quality of collected data.
Pass your data set from a series of the data-cleaning process:
Once you collect the data for your research, you can use a number of data-cleaning tips to improve the quality of data through a questionnaire. These data cleaning steps include the removal of duplicate data, fixing spelling errors, and handling missing data without being bias.
Organize the data alongside you are collecting it:
Data handling and management is another way to store data in a more organized way. You can work on this aspect while collecting data from the respondents. Remember, organized data is simple and easy to read and thus can unveil more valuable facts about a given problem.
Try to stick to either open-ended questions or closed-ended questions:
Lastly, a researcher must collect the information by using either open-ended or closed-ended questionnaires. Using only one method in a research project will help you remain focused and handle questionnaire data and its results more effectively.
Mentioned above are some ways to make a good questionnaire for collecting good quality data and improving the quality of collected data. However, for making questionnaires for academic research, you can also directly seek professional dissertation help. Additionally, by keeping in mind all these qualities, you can also use AI tools like Monkey survey, Qualaroo, SoGosurvey, and TypeForm.
Final Thoughts:
In a nutshell, you cannot improve the quality of questionnaire data by solely focusing on data trimming or analyzing tips. However, to maintain data quality standards, you must start working on quality measures right after the selection of the topic of interest and method of data collection. In case you do not work on the pre-data collection phase, like questionnaire structuring, then you may have to face a bit more problems in improving the overall quality of questionnaire data later on.
