This 2-credit full-semester class provides an applied (hands-on) introduction to designing survey questionnaires. Students will learn:
·How to design a questionnaire in a team
·Best practices for survey and question design.
·Basic pitfalls of survey design - names, definitions,examples.
·How to use Excel to track questions, coded responses, and prompts for interviewers
·How to use interviewing software SurveyToGo (but NOT in Fall 2020 -- too hard to do remotely -- although we'll have a demonstration of it)
This class is not the equivalent of a comprehensive survey research class (e.g. EPSY 5244 or PubH 6810) or a statistical course on sampling and weighting (e.g. STAT 5201). Instead, it takes a learning-by-doing approach to one part of the survey process: designing questions for a questionnaire.
Each time it is taught, student teams will design a questionnaire for a real or imaginary client, such as a non-profit/NGO or governmental agency. In 2020 the client is a UMN doctoral student studying Black women who obtained PhDs (in the US) while raising biological, adoptive or foster children. Student teams will draft and revise questions about respondents':
·Demographics and employment
·Life histories (mainly related to study, career, and parenting choices)
·Knowledge, use, and opinions about services -- possibly related to school options during the pandemic
·Anxiety and well-being (or similar concepts)
The class will spend two weeks on each module, actively engaging in class about draft questions and through that practice learning how to improve them. Students will not conduct the survey, apart from a few test interviews.
Grade break-down (approximate):
60% Teams: ten items by @ 6% each - first drafts; second drafts with tracked changes. (#1-10)
5% Teams: turn in final questionnaire in Excel (#11)
5% Individual: cognitive interviewing memo re: pilot test of survey questions
15% Individual: posts & mini-quizzes
15% Class participation, including group members grading each other