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The Demographix Research Blog
Random thoughts from the team at demographix, keeping you up to date with what's new in the world of online research. Use the year and month links below to navigate the blog entries.
all 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010March April May June September November
April 2006 blog entries:
Question Bank gives access to rigorous survey composition techniques
20 Apr 2006 — Question Bank run by the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. It's also a useful reference for teachers and students of survey methodology, and we recommend it for browsing even if you're not an academic to get an idea of how to structure questions in a survey.
Ambiguity of wording, and anticipating what responses might be, should always be at the forefront of your mind when designing surveys. The Question Bank provides you with the opportunity to see what questions were asked in some major UK social surveys, such as: the 10-yearly UK Census of Population; the annual British Household Panel Survey; the continual (every two months or quarter) Office of National Statistics Omnibus survey; or the ad hoc Young People's Social Attitudes Survey. There's a full list here.
You can dig down into any one of these surveys and find out what the paper/laptop questionnaire or call centre script looks like in PDF format. There's also invaluable information on how the topics within a survey are structured. An alternative way of interrogating the depth of this resource is to use the advanced search facility. Enter a range of search keywords or terms to find questions containing them - click on a link in the results screen and it will take you into the page in the PDF where the question is located - excellent stuff!
Piping aboard greater interactivity in survey design
1 Apr 2006 — Great News! Dynamic question text has recently been introduced to demographix, and we've all been amusing ourselves devising questions based on preceding answers.
Also known as "piping", the new feature allows a respondent's answer to a single choice or write-in question to be incorporated into the text of later items in the survey.
For example, the write-in "Tell us who your favourite singer is?" can feed a name into the later question: "What is the best song that [piped name] has ever sung?". This simple new feature allows for a greater sense of interactivity with your respondents.
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