Questionnaire Pilot Testing and Administration - Victoria Uni

This report details the design, piloting, and administration of a questionnaire aimed at understanding consumer behavior related to luxury goods among Australian travelers. The report covers the rationale for choosing face-to-face administration, its advantages and disadvantages, and an evaluation of its success. It includes suggestions for improving the administration procedure, such as using postal surveys, and modifications to the questionnaire, like expanding the time frame for travel history. The pilot study involved 10 participants aged 18 and older, and the report reflects on the ethical considerations and key lessons learned during the survey process. The goal was to identify issues, suggest improvements for data quality and response rates, and revise the questionnaire for final distribution.

Running head: QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
Questionnaire Piloting & Administration
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
Abstract
The administration procedure selected for the study can be termed as a success considering the
questionnaire and the target population that has been sought to carry out the pilot test. This study
is based on designing and developing a questionnaire that will help in conducting a pair pilot test
for the administration of the final questionnaire. The study will also cite the reasons for selecting
a particular method of administration the survey, was the administration process a success, what
are the suggestions of improving the administration procedure, changes that can be brought to
the questionnaire before beginning the procedure if administering the survey to a larger group,
and a final reflection on the key lessons learnt from the administration procedure. The pilot study
included the a sample size of 10 people that are aged 18 years.

2QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Administration procedure and its rationale......................................................................................3
Was the administration procedure a success?..................................................................................5
Improvements in the administration procedure...............................................................................5
Changes to be made in the questionnaire........................................................................................6
Reflection on the administration process.........................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

3QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
Introduction
Questionnaire can be described as a vital research instrument that consists of a series of
questions and it is used to gather information from the respondents. Questionnaires can be of
different types and they can be in the written form, and are thus carried out through post,
computer, telephone, or by face to face. Questionnaires provides the efficient, quick and cheap
way of gaining large chunk of information through a small or large number of samples (Neuman
2012). This study is based on designing and developing a questionnaire that will help in
conducting a pair pilot test for the administration of the final questionnaire. The study will also
cite the reasons for selecting a particular method of administration the survey, was the
administration process a success, what are the suggestions of improving the administration
procedure, changes that can be brought to the questionnaire before beginning the procedure if
administering the survey to a larger group, and a final reflection on the key lessons learnt from
the administration procedure.
Administration procedure and its rationale
The administration procedure selected for this study is a face to face administration of the
questionnaire. Face to face is selected because it enables the interviewer to directly ask the
respondents in person and is similar to conducting an interview. This allows an interviewer to
explain every question to the respondent and helps the interviewer to probe out the answer. It has
an advantage over the telephonic interviews, the respondents are than willing to give longer
periods of time to provide responses to the questions that are asked face to face through a
questionnaire that has already been designed. The face to face interviews is selected due to it
dynamic nature and the questions although set out already, there is a big chance of reducing any
wrong information that might enter in to the responses. The face to face interviews is conducted

4QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
depending on the availability of the person, and it can be longer than the other administering
procedures. This sort of administering procedure leads to accurate responses and tend to have
higher response rates (Irvine, Drew and Sainsbury 2013).
Advantages of face to face administration of questionnaire:
 Accurate screening: face to face administration helps in accurate screening and
this prevents the respondent to provide the wrong information related to race, age,
and gender. This is however possible on the line conduct of the questionnaire
surveys. For the purpose of the data analysis, the data entered can be considered
to be true.
 Capture non-verbal and verbal ques- face to face administration process is no
denial that it captures the non-verbal and the verbal ques. However, this method
can also highlight the body language of a respondent.
 Keep focus- the interviewer has the control over the respondents and has the
ability to keep a focus of the respondent on to the responses, thus tracking the
completion of the interview (Szolnoki and Hoffmann 2013).
Disadvantages of face to face administration of questionnaire:
 Limited sample size- the size of the interview is dependent on to the number of the
people that are interviewing or administering the questionnaire. Similarly, the
number of sample size is also dependent on to the number of the qualified
respondents.
 Manual entry of data- if the questionnaire is administered manually then the data
needs to be entered manually or it is scanned. If there is a need to scan the

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document then the cost of the process rises significantly. Accordingly, the process
of manual data entry can elongate the survey.
 Quality of the data by interviewer- the quality of data received will depend
significantly on the interviewer’s ability to gain data from the respondents. Thus,
it is important to mention that some of the interviews or surveys will include the
data from the ow biases of the one who is conducting the interview (Christensen
et al., 2013).
Was the administration procedure a success?
The administration procedure selected for the study can be termed as a success
considering the questionnaire and the target population that has been sought to carry out the pilot
test. The respondents were able to understand the questions but the sometimes they were taking a
bit more time to answer the question considering the length of the questionnaire (Robb, Gatting
and Wardle 2017). However, the respondents were asking questions if it was okay to mention
information regarding the trip that they have conducted more than 12 months. One question
which the majority of the respondents were eager to skip or rather unwilling to go through were
the questions that emphasized on the shopping motivation. The set of the questions were
significantly lengthy for some of the respondents. However, the average amount of time taken by
each of the respondents to compete the survey is 15 minutes and a maximum of 20 minutes for
some respondents.
Improvements in the administration procedure
The procedure selected for the polit study is a face to face administration of
questionnaire. However, considering the structure of the questionnaire, the language used is lucid

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with details that require some time to answer. The best way to conduct the survey for the pilot
study could have been done through the post. The Questionnaires can be sent to designated
respondents that are aged 18 and are the residents of Australia. Providing the questionnaire
through the post could have provided the respondents an ample amount of time to answer the
questionnaire and then send back the same to the designated address. This could have eliminated
the need to conduct a elongated interview and the respondents can at go through the details of the
sections that require more time to answer (Wiersma 2013).
Changes to be made in the questionnaire
The questionnaire although framed professionally, however certain questions could have
been changed to make it more relevant and easier to answer. The sample size selected for the
pilot study is only 10 people and each of them must be 18 years of age. Thus, there are certain
questions that could have been changed to make the questionnaire look more appealing to the
respondents. The 3rd question that asks whether the respondent have travelled in the last 12
months and have bought any luxury item. The time period of 12 months can be changed to 2
years, to include a greater number of respondents. The reason being that not all respondent
travelled within the last 12 months. A larger time frame could have included more respondents.
Similarly, the last question number 19 can be replaced with question like place of birth in
Australia. Question number 1 already emphasizes on the fact that whether the respondent is an
Australian resident/citizen or not. Thus, there is no need add another question of whether the
respondent is born in Australia or not. The questions are already elaborative and contains an
exhaustive list of different types of questions, thus there is no need to add any more question into
the questionnaire.
Reflection on the administration process

7QUESTIONNAIRE PILOTING & ADMINISTRATION
The course work demands the application of a questionnaire to analyze the certain
behavioral aspects of the consumers and the way consumers perceive the luxury items. It is
important to mention that the initially the face to face administration of the questionnaire is used
to conduct the pilot study (Oltmann 2016). The survey administration process provided an ample
scope to interview and ask questions to the respondents face to face and this is done to reduce
any kind of confusion that might arise due to the administration of the questionnaire. The key
lesson learnt pertains to the way the survey was conducted and it is ethically right to not to reveal
the names of the respondents if they are unwilling to take up the survey or unwilling to reveal
their name (Sieber 2012).
Conclusion
From the above study it can be concluded that, Questionnaires can be of different types
and they can be in the written form, and are thus carried out through post, computer, telephone,
or by face to face. Questionnaires provides the efficient, quick and cheap way of gaining large
chunk of information through a small or large number of samples. This study provided a insight
into the face to face administration of questionnaire Face to face is selected because it enables
the interviewer to directly ask the respondents in person and is similar to conducting an
interview. This allows an interviewer to explain every question to the respondent and helps the
interviewer to probe out the answer.

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References
Christensen, A.I., Ekholm, O., Glümer, C. and Juel, K., 2013. Effect of survey mode on response
patterns: comparison of face-to-face and self-administered modes in health surveys. The
European Journal of Public Health, 24(2), pp.327-332.
Irvine, A., Drew, P. and Sainsbury, R., 2013. ‘Am I not answering your questions
properly?’Clarification, adequacy and responsiveness in semi-structured telephone and face-to-
face interviews. Qualitative Research, 13(1), pp.87-106.
Neuman, W.L., 2012. Designing the Face-to-Face Survey. In Handbook of Survey Methodology
for the Social Sciences (pp. 227-248). Springer, New York, NY.
Oltmann, S.M., 2016. Qualitative interviews: A methodological discussion of the interviewer and
respondent contexts. In Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 17, No. 2, p. 1).
Robb, K.A., Gatting, L. and Wardle, J., 2017. What impact do questionnaire length and monetary
incentives have on mailed health psychology survey response?. British journal of health
psychology, 22(4), pp.671-685.
Sieber, J.E. ed., 2012. The ethics of social research: Surveys and experiments. Springer Science
& Business Media.
Szolnoki, G. and Hoffmann, D., 2013. Online, face-to-face and telephone surveys—Comparing
different sampling methods in wine consumer research. Wine Economics and Policy, 2(2), pp.57-
66.
Wiersma, W., 2013. The validity of surveys: online and offline. Oxford Internet institute, 18(3),
pp.321-340.