internet-based.org/internet-polls/
Questionnaires play an important role in research. They enable us to gather data that could reveal hidden information about individuals. However, they are not without limitations.
Questions can be self-administered, with participants answering all questions themselves, or researcher-administered, where the research team interviews a sample of respondents by phone, in-person, or online. Self-administered questionnaires tend to have lower response rates than researcher-administered questionnaires, due in part to the impersonal nature of mailed paper surveys and automated telephone menu systems.
Web-based questionnaires have a variety of advantages, including greater reach over traditional phone or mail-based surveys and the ability to include a global audience. However, they also come with some issues like the difficulty in reaching a representative demographic sample. They are also affected by issues such as screen dimensions, hardware platforms, operating systems, and browser settings.
When designing a questionnaire, it’s important to carefully consider the research aims and objectives. It is also crucial to consider the audience you’re asking such as whether they are able to understand and respond to the language you use or if they’ve got the time to complete a lengthy questionnaire.
To ensure that the new questionnaires are working as intended, it’s important to test them in advance using qualitative methods, such as focus groups, cognitive interviews, or pretesting. Questionnaires are prone to “question-order effects” where the answers to earlier questions may influence the responses to subsequent ones.