Developing Written Questionnaires: Questionnaire Design
By Alexis Mitman Colker, Ph.D.

Good questionnaire design is critical to success. A good design will encourage participants to answer your questions fully and accurately and will provide information that can be analyzed to generate real knowledge. Conversely, a poor design will discourage participants, reduce response rates, and provide information that is either confusing or useless. In this module, you will learn concrete tips on how to structure questionnaires for evaluative success. Good questionnaire design is in some ways an art...but, as you will see, it is an art that can be learned.

The objectives of this module are for you to understand:

• What is a reasonable length for a questionnaire.
• How to order questions in a questionnaire.
• What kind of graphic style choices make items most easily understood and answered.
• What characteristics of a paper or electronic questionnaire facilitate completion.
• The steps for testing a questionnaire prior to its use.