Piloting a Questionnaire

Critical Reflections on piloting a Questionnaire:

Why use a Questionnaire?

-          Primarily because they provide quick and easy way of accessing pupils opinions for data collection.

-          Means of data gathering from a wide range of respondents in a comparatively short time period.

-          Efficient in providing appropriate data for my enquiry – quantitative data, but can also produce answers and responses of a qualitative nature too.

Preparation:

-          Being a wear of problems of reliability and validity caused by a low response rate. To alleviate this, reading on the benefits of a ‘face – to –face’ delivery of questionnaire. Personal approach in this way may encourage participation.

-          Pre – planning of structured questions displayed clearly following an order that flows correctly from one topic to another. Asking myself how best to target my sample of audience of students ages from 4 -20 was quite difficult, large age range to cater for. Stepping into their shoes to think about how they may interpret and understand what I am asking. I want to encourage freedom of sharing opinions, not trick anyone with complicated and awkwardly worded questions.

-          Decided I wanted to include two types of questions, one being of a facular nature to find out basic information for future comparison and correlation (how many times per week people dance, their age, which style classes they take etc) Secondly, more open ended questions as I am hoping for a wider range of responses to share their experiences of what Dance means to  them. Getting an insight into respondents attitudes and perceptions will be important for my research, asking the deeper questions to allow for wider responses rather than just single yes/no answers,  (how do you feel when you dance/what do you think about dance etc)

-          Decided to try different style of question, some where I identified some appropriate statements that could determine effective answers from my sample respondents – kept it multiple choice again for a varies scope of data. Others, giving the respondent to volunteer their own comments on top of my suggestions. Finally, asking the student to describe what Dance means to them through optional choice of colour, diagrams, words of phrases – a wear dancers are artists and may favour this creative approach. This question was specifically aimed at the younger respondents who may find long written answers very boring.

Reflection

-Already a wear of potential reliability issues of data collection die to low response rate, although this was not the case in my pilot, it may be for future enquiries. One way to elevates this would be to also offer and online version of the questionnaire. E. G Survey Monkey, the process of completion online would be extremely helpful to those in busy work based situations. More convenient methods – also enabling me to send them to a wider community of people farther afield – more varied responses as people have time to take the questions outside of the dance place, they have more time to think more deeply about their answers and will not feel pressured from any influential surroundings.

-  Types of Questions massively affect the analysis; questions must be focussed around providing the information I need.

How to increase the effectiveness of this tool:

-          Although an online version may be convenient, it may prelude those who do not have internet access, having a questionnaire in a documented form which I can deliver face to face as well as an online version would hopefully ‘cover all bases’ regarding receiving optimum response of accurate data.

-          More focus on the information I want to gather from doing the pilot, perhaps covering such a large age range was not the most effective use of a questionnaire – very difficult to compose questions to keep the attention and focus of very young children as well as young adults and parents.

-          To address the issue of potential teacher /student power relationships making data inaccurate, I could have created a poster stating that completing the questionnaire is completely optional. It could have read ‘Is anyone Interested in sharing their Dance experience?’, the poster could also tackle potential ethical issues by using text explaining what my aims are for doing the research, where the information will go, how it will be analysed etc. Confidentially issues were discussed face to face on this occasion – time could have been saved by creating a poster. A poster would also offer participants to volunteer to offer their thoughts, rather than being forced.

Summary:

Constructing effective questions is not easy! But, given due care and attention, have the facility to produce valuable data and research to really develop an enquiry, whilst staying within the work based learning environment. Piloting a questionnaire has been extremely useful, more so to draw my attention to how I can better its effectiveness for the future. Main point to consider about the questions themselves: do they make sense? Are they in the correct order? Are they visually well presented? All these areas could have been improved from my pilot of this technique, targeting my sample audience more accurately would mean producing a questionnaire or survey that is professional, but aimed to be inclusive for the ages targeted, both parents and students themselves.