Evaluate the questionnaire. Can you suggest improvements?
Without an iota of doubt, a questionnaire must be perfectly designed to meet its objectives. To efficiently evaluate the questionnaire in question, it is essential to cross-check its design against several important factors that have to be considered when designing a good questionnaire.
Aim:
A good questionnaire should present a good and clear picture of what has to be collected to present quality data. All questions asked should directly address the objective of the research (Siedlecki, 2019). The questionnaire in question clearly stipulates on the instructions that the survey seeks to collect employee’s opinions on patient safety issues, event reporting, and medical in their organization. None of the questions in this questionnaire deviate from the goal at hand. All questions are seeking relevant data on patient safety.
Presentation:
The physical appearance of a questionnaire has a great impact on the response of the target audience. Having an attractive questionnaire is an added advantage. The size, color, quality of paper, and format of the questionnaire are essential factors to be considered when designing the questionnaire. The layout of this questionnaire is good, and it definitely looks professional. However, the background color of the questionnaire is a little bit dull. This color makes it less clear and difficult to read. The font is also too small, and some respondents may strain to see what is being asked or give the wrong responses. The font size should be increased to make sure it is readable by all respondents. Although research on the impact of color in surveys is not adequate, many questionnaire designs guide advice that color can influence survey responses (Cape, 2017).
Type of questions asked:
Unless it is vital to get the respondents’ opinions, open-ended questions or subjective questions should be avoided at all costs. People have different perspectives, and when open questions are asked, the answer given might not be useful. Responses to subjective questions are hard to quantify, and there is a high likelihood of getting incomplete information (Niki, 2017). The questionnaire, in this case, is comprised of closed questions and one subjective question. The closed questions have a number of advantages that contribute greatly to the design of this questionnaire. First and foremost, respondents will have an easy time indicating his answer. Therefore, the respondent not have to think about how best to frame his answer.
Closed questions will also ensure that the respondents rely less on their memory when answering questions. Last but not least, responses from closed questions are easily classified, thus making analysis very easy and straight forward. Although, closed questions are encouraged when designing a questionnaire, an open question like the one used in this questionnaire may be necessary to keep the respondent engaged and also to create a rapport. However, open questions should not be overly used because they take up a lot of time, space and effort. It is also important to avoid contradicting or repetitive questions in a questionnaire. In this case, the questionnaire does not have any contradicting or repetitive question. The questions are very clear and do not confuse any kind of confusion (Niki, 2017).
Terminology:
Questionnaires should possess a minimum use of technical language. The language used should be easy to understand and to the point. When designing the questionnaire, the language used should be relevant to the audience being studied. In this scenario, the language used is appropriate to the group of people being studied. However, although the vocabulary used in this questionnaire is simple the questionnaire also includes a definition of some words which may be perceived as jargon to some respondents. Defining terms such as event and patient safety makes sure that the proper responses are given and reduces the likelihood oh having unanswered questions because the respondent did not understand the terminologies used (Stuart & Yu, 2019).
Sequence of questions:
In order to avoid misunderstandings, it is imperative to properly arrange the questions asked in a questionnaire. The first question should be easy to answer. On the other hand, personal and subjective questions should be placed somewhere in the middle or at the end of the questionnaire. The first question in this questionnaire is easy and is not threatening at all to the respondent. It simply asks in which department the respondent works at in the hospital. The first question is extremely crucial because if the respondent finds the first question to be difficult to comprehend, or they perceive it to be embarrassing or beyond their knowledge or experience, they will probably break off from proceeding or fully participating in the questionnaire. In this case, the first question of the questionnaire is easy and encourages the respondent to proceed to the next question.
After the initial question it is important to have the questions flowing in a sort of psychological manner. Maintaining such a psychological order makes sure that one question slowly leads to the next. For instance, the questionnaire under evaluation in this case is comprised of questions that initially engage the respondents on their work environment. The questions thereafter engage the respondents on their relationship with their supervisors and finally engage the respondents on events and patient safety. Such order makes sure that respondents don’t find it disconcerting having to shift from one topic to another. Question flow ensures that respondents don’t have to give their opinions on an issue they already dealt with.
Length of the questionnaire:
If a questionnaire has too many questions, there is a high likelihood that not all questions will be answered. For instance, in this case, the respondents are healthcare professions who are extremely busy attending to patients. In such a busy schedule, no is willing to spend a lot of time trying to answer too many questions. It is essential to keep the questions short and to the point. A good questionnaire is characterized by having at least one or two pages of questions. The questionnaire under evaluation has four pages. Although this questionnaire indicates that the survey questions will take approximately ten to fifteen minutes to answer, not all the respondents will be able to finish the questionnaire because of the nature of their work. Other will complete the questionnaire but with low quality responses (Siedlecki, 2019).
There are several main problems with having long questionnaires. First and foremost, human beings possess task unrelated thoughts. Therefore, most of us are usually thinking of something other than what we are doing at that moment and time. Researchers have discovered that the longer a task is, the greater the mismatch between what one is thinking about and what he is actually doing. Therefore, long questionnaires facilitate a greater mismatch between what respondents are thinking about and what they are doing.
The second problem is that after approximately 10 minutes, respondents usually increase the speed used in responding to questions. Therefore, they give more attention to questions at the start of the questionnaire than they do at the end of the questionnaire. The questionnaire under evaluation has some important questions towards the end. Responses to such questions may not completely accurate because they were given less attention.
Summary of improvements that should be made to the questionnaire.
- Change the background color of the questionnaire to make it more appealing to the eye.
- A slight increase in font size will make the questionnaire easily readable.
- Reducing the length of the questionnaire is necessary to ensure that all the important questions are receiving maximum attention when responding.
- In order to reduce the likelihood of respondents getting bored, it might be necessary to add one or two open-ended questions (even if these questions won’t be analyzed) to offer a break from long questions (Siedlecki, 2019).
Will the survey meet its objectives? Explain.
Without an iota of doubt, the survey will meet its objective. The questionnaire has several characteristics of a good survey. The questionnaire is properly organized and unbiased. This questionnaire’s objective is to determine the altitude the healthcare professionals on patient safety in their organization. This objective has been met by asking by initially assessing the respondent’s work environment by asking a series of questions on how they relate with colleagues in their own unit and other units. Any organization that intends on succeeding in their endeavors recognizes the importance of teamwork between employees. The questions asked went further to determine the kind of relationship that exists between employees and their supervisors. The relationship that exists between employees and supervisors in the healthcare profession has a direct influence on patient safety.
In conclusion, all the questions asked in this questionnaire have some degree of relevance to the set objective. The closed questions particularly provide an avenue of making a straight forward analysis of the responses given (Gu & Gutman, 2016).
References
Cape, P. (2017). Questionnaire design: who cares?. Research World, 2017(66), 42-43. https://doi.org/10.1002/rwm3.20573
Gu, C., & Gutman, R. (2016). Combining item response theory with multiple imputations to equate health assessment questionnaires. Biometrics, 73(3), 990-998. https://doi.org/10.1111/biom.12638
Niki, H. (2017). Open and Closed Questions about Open and Closed SMC. Structure, 25(4), 569-570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.str.2017.03.011
Siedlecki, S. (2019). Tips for Developing Good Questionnaire Items. Clinical Nurse Specialist, 33(6), 253-260. https://doi.org/10.1097/nur.0000000000000478
Stuart, M., & Yu, C. (2019). A computationally efficient method for selecting a split questionnaire design. Communications In Statistics – Simulation And Computation, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610918.2019.1697819