Considering Questionnaire Design through Multiple Theoretical Lenses
May 12 – 13:00-16:00
Room: Conductor Room, First Floor
There is a large body of literature on questionnaire design that is constantly evolving to address new methods, modes, and populations. It can be difficult to synthesize this literature into a coherent set of guidelines. This short course will consider questionnaire design through relevant theoretical lenses, with a special emphasis on considering cross-national or cross-cultural surveys. Participants who enroll in the work shop will learn:
- The primary goals of questionnaire design.
- How researchers evaluate questionnaire design.
- How other elements of survey design (e.g., mode, population, topic) affect questionnaire design
- How to think about questionnaire design through four major theoretical lenses:
- Surveys as a cognitive task.
- Surveys as a conversation.
- Surveys as a social interaction.
- (Some) surveys as a visual processing task.
Throughout the course, participants will have the opportunity to share their own experiences and expertise, as well as being able to ask questions specific to their questionnaire design needs. By the end of the course, participants will be able to: (1) understand the goals of questionnaire design, (2) know how to collect and use survey data to evaluate different questionnaire designs, (3) understand the implications of other aspects of survey design for questionnaire design, and (4) be able to think about a questionnaire through the four relevant theoretical lenses.
Instructor: Prof. Allyson Holbrook
Allyson Holbrook is a Professor of public policy, management, and analytics and psychology (by courtesy) in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is a social psychologist and survey methodologist whose research and teaching addresses survey design, particularly questionnaire design. She has taught at UIC since 2002 and also spent over a decade working on applied survey data collection projects with the UIC Survey Research Laboratory. She is a current co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.