Surveys have been defined as: systematic collection
of information to describe, compare, and predict
attitudes, opinions, values, knowledge, and
behavior.
meaningful information can be obtained by asking the
parties of interest:
What they know.
What they believe.
How they behave
It based on self-reported information from
participants, rather than on observations or
measurements taken by the researcher.
survey methods:
1. Face-to-face interview
2. Questionnaire over the telephone
3. Mailed questionnaire.
Survey techniques can be used for all three purposes:
Describing phenomena
2. Analyzing relationships among variables
3. Analyzing differences among groups or across time.
Could Be Prospective or Retrospective.
It is not experimental, but could be used to serve
experimental purposes.
1.
TYPES OF INFORMATION
 Facts.
 Knowledge.
 Behaviors.
 Opinions.
 Personal characteristic.
TYPES OF ITEMS
 Open- format items
 Interviews
 Permit broad and flexible response.
 Questionnaires may also include open-format items.
 Depend on participant ability to communicate in writing.
 Disadvantage:
 Analysis.

Must separate and categorize the responses into a relatively small
number of manageable categories.
 Advantage:
 Direct the interview, good explanation and obtain needed
information.
 It could bring new idea.
 Sometimes used to generate closed-format items.
TYPES OF ITEMS
 Closed-format items
 Closed-format items restrict the range of possible
responses.
 Highly structured interviews may use closed-format
responses.
 Orally administered questionnaire.
 Lose the advantage of open-format.
 Four types of closed-format items are:
1.
Multiple-choice
2. Likert-type
3. Semantic differential
4. Q-sort items.
MULTIPLE-CHOICE
 It could allow some flexibility of response by including
“other”
 Permit to respondents to write.
 It may include vignette followed by MC questions.
LIKERT-TYPE
Likert-type items, are used to assess the strength of
response to a declarative statement.
The most typical set of responses includes
 “strongly agree,” “agree,” “undecided,” “disagree,” and
“strongly disagree.”
“very important” to “very unimportant,”
“strongly encourage” to “strongly discourage,”
SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL
 based on the work of Osgood and colleagues in the
1950s.
 Semantic differential items consist of adjective pairs
that represent different ends of a continuum.
 The respondent indicates the place on the continuum
that best represents the item or person being
described.
Q-SORT
 A q-sort is a method of forced-choice ranking of many
alternatives.’ It could be used to study job satisfaction of physical
therapists.
 To do so, the researcher would generate a set of, say, 50 items
about the job that might be important to physical therapists.
 “Chance to rotate among services,”
 “weekends off,”
 “availability of physical therapist assistants.”
 Each item would be written on a single card.
 Each therapist in the study would be asked to sort the cards into
categories as the following forced distribution:
 Exceedingly important (4 cards).
 Very important (10 cards).
 Moderately important (22 cards).
 Minimally important (10 cards).
 Negligible importance (4 cards).
Mailed questionnaires
Advantages
 Mailed surveys cost less
 Permit a broader sampling frame and larger numbers of
subjects.
Disadvantages
 Unavailability of appropriate mailing lists of subjects
 Low response rates
 Inability to gain information from individuals who
cannot read
 Lack of control over who actually responds to the
questionnaire.
Researcher-Developed Versus
Existing Instruments
 Researchers are encouraged to use or adapt existing self-
report tools that meet their needs before they develop their
own.
 Quality of life, coping, hope, self-care, and body image.
 When researchers determine that they require unique
information for their study, they must develop their own
questionnaire.
 Five basic steps to develop a questionnaire:
1.
Drafting
2.
Expert review.
3.
First revision.
4.
Pilot test.
5.
Final revision.
Drafting
Reexamine the purposes of the study.
Outline the major sections the questionnaire needs to
include to answer the questions under study.
Long questionnaire will reduce respondents number.
Consider the format and comprehensibility of the
questions.
Different topics may require items with different
formats.
Provide section headings for a transition between
different types of items.
Easier items be placed first on the questionnaire.
Demographic questions come last.
Font size (10, 12, or 14), and type (use familiar one).
Researchers should write clearly and avoid jargon.
The instructions on how to complete the survey
must be extremely clear and specific
“Check one box,” “Circle as many items as apply,”
Change instruction if format is changed.
color of paper
fairly light to ensure good readability
the size and arrangement of pages
Good-quality paper (booklet arrangement)
EXPERT REVIEW
Once the draft is written the researcher needs to check
for content validity by subjecting the questionnaire to
review by a colleague knowledgeable about the topic
under study.
 Did important elements of the study were addressed?
 Were questions understandable?
 Were terms defined satisfactorily?
 Assess the format of the questionnaire.
FIRST REVISION
 Make revisions in the questionnaire based on the
expert’s feedback.
 If the selected colleague makes no recommendations
for change, the researcher probably needs to find
another more critical colleague to review the work.
 Test the instrument on the types of subjects who will
complete the questionnaire.
 Have subjects indicate the time it took them to complete
the questionnaire.
 Subjects review the questionnaire and write any comments
they might have about the nature and format of the items.
 Determine the return rate of the questionnaires
 Determine the reasons for non-responding.
 An item repeatedly left unanswered



that placement of the item on the page is a problem
the item is so sensitive that people do not wish to answer it,
item is so complicated that it takes too much energy to answer it.
FINAL REVISION
Rewording of items, elimination of items, addition of
items, or revision of the questionnaire format may all
be indicated by the results of the pilot study.
If a great many problems were identified in the
pilot study, the researcher may wish to retest the
questionnaire on a small group of subjects before
investing the money and time in the final
questionnaire.
Motivating Prospects to Respond
 It’s your job motivate subjects to complete the
questionnaire.
 Attractive cover letter
 be brief but complete
 provide potential respondents with a good reason to complete
the study.
 Other methods inclusion of incentives:
 Coupon for free meal or 1 JD bill
 entry into a random drawing for a more valuable incentive
when the completed questionnaire is returned
 offering the results of the study when the analysis is complete.
Implementation Details
Addressing options
Envelopes and return envelope with a number for
respondents.
Postage (first class or business-reply postage for return
envelopes)
Follow-up (Plans for follow-up mailings).
 This follow-up packet should contain a new cover letter
and a duplicate copy of the questionnaire.
 differentiate between first and second returns
INTERVIEWS
 Advantages
 Interviews can achieve greater depth of response
 Maintain control over who actually responds
 Determine the opinions of those who cannot read
 Have higher response rates.
 Disadvantages
 Difficulty coordinating researcher and subject schedules
 Lack of anonymity of responses
 High personnel
 Travel, or telephone costs.
Development of Interview
Schedules
 The researcher must decide whether structured, semistructured,
or unstructured interviews
 The basic steps of drafting, reviewing, revising, and pilot
testing are completed as they would be when developing a
mailed questionnaire.
 If the data are to be collected through telephone interviews, each
question must be simple so that respondents can comprehend all
their response choices without a visual cue.
 In person interviews can include more complex questions if
visual aids are provided for respondents.
 An advance letter outlines the purposes of the study
 In phone interview the first few sentences uttered by the
interviewer
Implementation Details
comfort of in-person participants location.
 Comfortable place and quiet location.
maintaining appropriate supplies (paper-pencil, tapes
…)
training interviewers
 When use more interviewers and supply an outline.
tracking contacts with prospective participants.