Questionnaires

Your questionnaire will help you identify the demographic you should pitch your media product at.

I have scanned in an except from a book by Rosemarie Newell on Research methodology if you want some more information about making your questionnaire.

The most important things about designing a questionnaire is the two different forms of question:

Open Questions:

Open questions allow individuals to respond in any way they wish e.g: Where do you like to go out?

Open questions will give you a wealth of detail and information about a particular subject but are a lot less easy to quantify and require much more thought and analysis to draw conclusions from or see patterns arising thereof. Answers can be ambiguous, wide ranging and difficult to categorise.

Closed Questions:

Closed Questions are where the answers can only be yes or no or a set of answers given to the respondent e.g:

Do you know of the music genre Grime?

yes/no

or

Which of the following would you say best describes your social status:

a: Working Class

b. Middle Class

c. Upper Class

Closed questions are easily quantifiable and can be converted in to charts or diagrams giving a very quick way of analysing the data. They have a disadvantage in that they force an answer from the respondent . For example faced with the question: Do you like the music genre drum and bass? Yes or No.

the respondent may want to say 'it depends, I like that tune with that guy from that group I like' or 'Sometimes, but it's not the sort of music I like to play all the time.' You can make the best of a closed question if you open it up further with the following question.

For Example:

Do you like Indie Music?

yes/no

you could follow with:

Why?

or in other circumstances you could open the previous question by following with:

Please provide further details.

If a list of choices is given a category of 'other' should be given for people who cannot find a suitable response.