By: Writing Tips Today
Students will be expected to write questionnaires for many PhD or Masters degrees. Questionnaire writing helps you to collect data that you need to carry out your empirical research.
You will need to write a thesis or dissertation based on the results of your questionnaire. For a Masters or PhD, your writing will include the notable results of your empirical research.
You will write about your collection and analysis of your own original data. During your writing and research process, you will meet with your supervisor, who will make suggestions and guide your work.
Together you will decide whether to carry out quantitative or qualitative research, or a combination of these two types of research.
The researcher should also carry out a literature review before writing the questionnaire.
When writing a questionnaire, you should consider the following:
your research objectives.
sample size, which is the amount of people who receive the questionnaire.
method of delivery (manually / phone / postal / electronic)
cost
type of analysis
survey population (information about people who take part in the research)
how to respect privacy of the participants
how to thank the participants for their cooperation
Exercise:
Look at the types of personal data below, then decide which items are necessary for the research and which are unnecessary.
name
age
address
marital status
number of children
blood type
eye colour
political views
religion
profession
languages spoken
income level
educational level
nationality
The relevant factors are known as variables, that is factors that can influence the results of your questionnaire.