Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design -- For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires

by Norman M. Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, Brian Wansink

Since it was first published more than twenty-five years ago, Asking Questions has become a classic guide for designing questionnaires¾the most widely used method for collecting information about people?s attitudes and behavior. An essential tool for market researchers advertisers, pollsters, and social scientists, this thoroughly updated and definitive work combines time-proven techniques with the most current research, findings, and methods. The book presents a cognitive approach to questionnaire design and includes timely information on the Internet and electronic resources. Comprehensive and concise, Asking Questions can be used to design questionnaires for any subject area, whether administered by telephone, online, mail, in groups, or face-to-face. The book describes the design process from start to finish and is filled with illustrative examples from actual surveys.

Genres: Research, Research Methods, Education

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 29, 1982

Reviews

[Emma Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good baseline read for making questionnaire.

It is pretty easy to get through and nicely divided so you can focus on what's relevant for you. Some of it is a bit outdated, but most of it still holds up. It is more quantitative oriented than qualitative/open-ended, but give some good general insight about questionnaires.

[Felipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for anyone working with surveys, questionnaires or interviews, whether personal or internet based. Probably more helpful for people working with large population sizes and/or lengthy questionnaires, but definitely a good reference for anyone using these methodologies.

[Ke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like a manual on how to make questionnaires. The authors bring interesting points and good questionnaire examples. However, not all chapters are developed at the same level, for example, a lot of the book is devoted to making questionnaires to evaluate professors and instructors.

[Alex Railean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent guide and reference material for researchers who design surveys.

[Sagar Jethani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to assist my MBA thesis team in the construction and design of our marketing questionnaire last year. It does an admirable job delivering questionnaire design in a single, readable volume. Not the kind of book you will savor with a glass of red beside a roaring fire, but it does the job.

[Abdullah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a beginner in designing questionnaires. This book gave a good overview but it didn't technically helped me to design one. He didn't talk much about validity and reliability, and literature review. But it is still a good book that you should refer to to avoid common mistakes when designing surveys.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually read the 1982 version, borrowed from Gutman Library. An oldie but goodie, for sure. That one had only two authors Sudman & Bradburn so hopefully I can take a look at the newer edition with input from the 3rd author.

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for any researcher who deals with human subjects!