Question

It is important that a survey is anonymous. It is important for several reasons. Yes, due to the sensitivity and to expand on this, we hope the participants would be honest and this is more likely if it is anonymous. However, the participants may still not be honest because of fear of getting in trouble.

There are valid reasons why the survey questions may need to be closed ended. How many questions would you include on the survey? Would you have any questions that determine if a person is being dishonest?

Answer 1

In a survey research the amount of questions are dependent on what the researchers wants to measure. The researcher should make sure that all the domains are the covered, and all the information needed is addressed by the number of questions. It should be kept in mind that too many questions, such as 50-60 questions will get too lengthy for the participants and they may feel bored by it. Instead, the survey should be short, such as 10 questions, where the participants quickly finish the survey and pay attention to it.

In order to make sure that the person is answering the question honestly, it is important to determine whether the person is answering the questions randomly. To do this, the researcher should include common sense questions in which there could only be only one right answer, and if the participants answer it incorrectly this means that the participant was not paying attention to the survey. To check for honesty, the researcher could frame the same questions differently and place it at different places in a questionnaire, if the participant answers different on these pair of questions then it can be said that the answers were dishonest.