Questionnaires

The questionnaire provides a stru c t u red way of gathering information. It allows for the same question to be asked in the same way to a number of i n f o rmants. This enables statistical analysis of the data to be used, which allows a large amount of information to be summarised in a convenient f o rm. A questionnaire can be constructed to investigate user experience with a product, their need of a new product, identification of how well they do with the technology they use etc. A typical questionnaire consists of a limited number of questions with pre – d e fined answer categories, focused in on the topic of interest. It can also consist of some more open questions where the informants need to write in answers in their own w o rds. Questionnaires are usually distributed to a sample of the targ e t population and the responses are collected and then summarised using statistical analysis. Such a questionnaire can also be used in an interv i e w situation (See section about interviews) where an interviewer reads the questions and fill in the answers on behalf of the subject.