Assalamualaikum and Hai fellow experts,
May i know, can we develop our own questions (items) in the survey as additional measures for our questionnaire?
What should we do after we self developed the items? Any advice?
Please enlighten me. Thank you
Absolutely. Ideally, every interview schedule or questionnaire must have three parts (especially in the social and behavioural sciences).
The first part must have items related to background of the respondents such as their age, gender, religion, income, education, etc. These are the items that will give you and the reader an idea about the socio-economic background of the respondents. In other words, it gives everyone an idea about the profile of the respondents which is very important to know if the findings are to be generalised to similar populations. These are items that you as a researcher will include.
The second part usually has items based on the findings of previous studies. This is where your review of previous studies comes into play. When you review/read previous studies that are somewhat similar to your own, you can note down the findings from those studies and convert them into items or questions to be included in the second part of your own interview schedule or questionnaire. For example- In one study on alcoholism, it is found that those who had a wonderful first drinking experience were more likely to become alcoholic in later life. You can then use this finding and turn it into a question- How was your first drinking experience? (4- Excellent, 3- good, 2- average- 1, poor- 0- extremely poor). The reason we do this is to confirm previous findings using our own study. When a hypothesis is proven again and again, it becomes a theory and when a theory is proven again and again, it becomes a fact. That is how research helps in building knowledge. You can also include questions that you feel might be related to alcoholism (in this case) but for every item you include, there must be a justification as to why you have included it in your study. This must be mentioned in the 'tools of data collection' section by citing other authors. Thus, the second part of your questionnaire/interview schedule will also include questions/items that you introduce based on previous studies.
The third part usually but not always, contains a standardised scale to measure a construct/issue- ex: alcoholism. This scale must not be modified in any way as it will affect the validity of the scale. You must cite the authors of the scale as well.
I hope this was useful. All the best!
Hello Arman Haji Ahmad, I would recommend using a validated survey instrument. However in saying that I did my own questions for my study of falls down stairs and escalators which is on my site, however I think it is better for you to use validated survey instruments as then also you know it is tested, but 2ndly you have good references to include in your background literature & discussion. I do tend to think though that there are too many survey instruments in total on every topic if you consider all, it gets very confusing & you can spend copious time understanding them all. Good luck.
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