Designing Surveys and Questionnaires: Principles and Methods

Harvard HGSE

Questionnaires are among the most common data collection methods that educational researchers and other social scientists employ. Thus, surveys wield tremendous impact on the data based decision making that increasingly permeates our educational system and in society more broadly. Yet producing high-quality survey measures is not a straightforward task. Survey designers must choose between open ended, ranking, or rating items; between asking questions or posing statements for respondents to…