Research questionnaire (5)

The version of the questionnaire which I have sent to six reviewers consists of 68 questions in nine sections:

• Priority usage – 5 questions
• User training – 4 questions
• User ownership – 3 questions
• User satisfaction – 8 questions
• Learning style – 11 questions
• Spreadsheet competency – 14 questions
• Spreadsheet efficacy – 8 questions
• Spreadsheets/Priority – 11 questions
• Personal details – 4 questions

The data (questions) are stored in a hierarchy: options belong to questions, questions belong to sections, sections are connected to versions along with their display order. Thus I can easily create a new version of the questionnaire which eliminates a section or two. I can also change the order of the sections without changing the questions asked per section.

I may well have to do this as the feedback which I have received so far is that the questionnaire is too long. The respondent also did not understand the point of the questions about learning style. As the the spreadsheet/Priority section is of very high importance, I will probably change its position so that it comes after user ownership.

If the other reviewers are in agreement about the length of the questionnaire, then I have four options:

1. Remove sections
2. Keep all of the sections but remove superfluous questions
3. Remove questions from sections and delete sections from the version
4. Do nothing

There are definitely some superfluous questions in the spreadsheet competency section, thus those could be removed without compromising the final results. I don't want to cut the number of questions per section to below six (for those where it is above six) as I lose accuracy by doing so. I don't want to remove sections as each section belongs to a hypothesis in my research, so removing sections would be reducing the breadth of my research. If I had to make a choice, then spreadsheet efficacy would be the first section to go.

I expect to get all the responses back by the end of the week so that I can discuss them with the occupational psychologist. I will then have to make a decision as to what the next version of the pilot questionnaire should contain, then send the new questionnaire to both the original reviewers and also to a few more people. This process will have to be repeated as many times as needed until I am convinced that I have a suitable questionnaire.

Then I will have to send it to a company in order to get real results.