-
Questionnaires and Web Experiments
A questionnaire is a type of research tool that contains questions that are standardized to gather responses from respondents. The responses to each question (item) on a well-structured survey can be consolidated and assessed statistically. Questionnaires are employed in a variety of kinds of research, like market research and scholarly studies.
When you design your survey, it is essential to consider the people you’re aiming at. Questions must be clear and easy to understand without the use of jargon that is difficult for people who are not experts to comprehend. It is also important to keep the duration of the survey brief. The longer the survey is, the less likely respondents are to respond.
Web experiments are an online experimental method of research that utilizes web-based interfaces, such as an application for mobile devices or a website. This method has numerous advantages, such as the possibility of creating interactive and personalised tests, the possibility to track user activity and conditional branching based on the previous answers provided by participants.
The disadvantages of web-based research include the lack of a control group, which can lead to unintentional confounding and inadequate generalization. Also, it may be difficult to evaluate the outcomes of a web-based study, due to its interactivity.
It is also important to test your questionnaire at the very minimum, with a convenient sample before distributing it in the field. This will enable you to identify ambiguity, unclear wording, or biases in the questions, and eliminate them before administering the questionnaire to your target population.