Questionnaire Research

I have found the following link which serves as a basic guide to creating a questionnaire, giving you guidance and aiding you in avoiding common pitfalls. http://www.action-research.com/uua/question3.html

The most basic of these are:

• Avoid open ended questions, used fixed answers if at all possible
• be clear in exactly how many answers you are looking for i.e. tick one box only
• Do not ask double barrelled questions
• Put simple questions towards the beginning of the questionnaire
• Try to avoid over complicating the questionnaire, if it is not necessary for certain people to fill in certain sections make this as clear as possible.

these points are reiterated in the following link http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0r8xOI5rBZoC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=how+to+write+a+questionnaire&ots=ol9OIlS_SB&sig=Hoa3ToLCP4DjCQZcjLHiZH0Ks5c#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20write%20a%20questionnaire&f=false

In addition to these point, it had previously occurred to me that as my project is about the recordings being contrasted directly with other recordings, it is not necessary for me to have a controlled listening environment. As, by default, the listening environment will be identical for both versions of the track for each listener. Due to this, I intend to host my questionnaire online, hosting my tracks on soundcloud and using survey monkey to host my questionnaire, as I have seen others successfully use this site in the past. I think, by using this method, I will be able to reach a far wider demographic than if I attempt to use a paper based questionnaire, with which I suspect I am limiting my subjects to my classmates.

As my questionnaire is only trying to determine preference, I believe that I will get the clearest results if I use a basic 3 option answering system. The questions will ask the subject whether they prefer some element of the song in version A or version B. The subject may then answer A B or indifferent. I feel by using this system I will be able to determine not only which version people prefer, but also what it is about the version that has led to this decision. I also intend to determine the age and gender of my subjects within the questionnaire, in order to establish of the opinions are different between various demographics.

Songs will be clearly labelled A or B, but will be set to shuffle, in order to ensure that the order they are played in is not affecting the subjects decisions.

Example Questions:

                                                                                                           A           Neither A nor B       B

Which version of the song did you prefer?

Which version of the song did you feel was better produced?

Which version of the song did you feel was a better 

performance by the band?

Which version of the song did you find more relatable? 

I will add more questions to this as I progress