Relaciones geográficas were a series of elaborate questionnaires distributed to the lands of King Philip II of Spain in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in North America . They were done so, upon his command, from 1579–1585. This was a direct response to the reforms imposed by the Ordenanzas , ordinances, of 1573.
31-548: These questionnaires had upward of fifty questions that requested information on various aspects of the Spanish colonial life in each region or major town, in order to govern it more effectively. Thus, these questionnaires had more of an administrative and functional purpose as opposed to intellectual gain. These questionnaires are oftentimes considered the first statistical study of the New World , since they attempted to chart
62-471: A 5-day survey employing the Pew Research Center’s usual methodology (with a 25% response rate) with results from a more rigorous survey conducted over a much longer field period and achieving a higher response rate of 50%. In 77 out of 84 comparisons, the two surveys yielded results that were statistically indistinguishable. Among the items that manifested significant differences across the two surveys,
93-763: A bridge between two continents. Today, many of the manuscript versions of these questionnaires are found in four different locations: The General Archive of the Indies in Seville, the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid, the Benson Library at the University of Texas at Austin , and the University of Glasgow Library . Questionnaire A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of
124-461: A mailed questionnaire about functional gastrointestinal disorders. The response rate to their community survey was 52%. Then, they took a random sample of 428 responders and 295 nonresponders for medical record abstraction, and compared nonresponders against responders. They found that respondents had a significantly higher body mass index and more health care seeking behavior for non-GI problems. However, except for diverticulosis and skin diseases, there
155-550: A questionnaire in regards to the order that the questions are asked. The order is as follows: Screens are used as a screening method to find out early whether or not someone should complete the questionnaire. Warm-ups are simple to answer, help capture interest in the survey, and may not even pertain to research objectives. Transition questions are used to make different areas flow well together. Skips include questions similar to "If yes, then answer question 3. If no, then continue to question 5." Difficult questions are towards
186-473: A scale or index. Questionnaires with questions that measure separate variables, could, for instance, include questions on: Questionnaires with questions that are aggregated into either a scale or index include for instance questions that measure: Usually, a questionnaire consists of a number of questions ( test items ) that the respondent has to answer in a set format. A distinction is made between open-ended and closed-ended questions. An open-ended question asks
217-573: A set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Open-ended, long-term questions offer the respondent the ability to elaborate on their thoughts. The Research questionnaire was developed by the Statistical Society of London in 1838. Although questionnaires are often designed for statistical analysis of
248-432: A survey's response rate was viewed as an important indicator of survey quality. Many observers presumed that higher response rates assure more accurate survey results (Aday 1996; Babbie 1990; Backstrom and Hursh 1963; Rea and Parker 1997). But because measuring the relation between nonresponse and the accuracy of a survey statistic is complex and expensive, few rigorously designed studies provided empirical evidence to document
279-463: A team approach is recommended in the questionnaire translation process to include subject-matter experts and persons helpful to the process. For example, even when project managers and researchers do not speak the language of the translation, they know the study objectives well and the intent behind the questions, and therefore have a key role in improving questionnaire translation. While questionnaires are inexpensive, quick, and easy to analyze, often
310-468: A very small one. Holbrook et al. (2005) assessed whether lower response rates are associated with less unweighted demographic representativeness of a sample. By examining the results of 81 national surveys with response rates varying from 5 percent to 54 percent, they found that surveys with much lower response rates decreased demographic representativeness within the range examined, but not by much. Choung et al. (2013) looked at community response rate to
341-434: Is a question where the testee has to complete a sentence (sentence completion item). In general, questions should flow logically from one to the next. To achieve the best response rates , questions should flow from the least sensitive to the most sensitive, from the factual and behavioural to the attitudinal, and from the more general to the more specific. There typically is a flow that should be followed when constructing
SECTION 10
#1732772141186372-804: Is a systematic reaction of the respondents to the scale used to formulate the survey question. Thus, the exact formulation of a survey question and its scale is crucial, since they affect the level of measurement error. Further, if the questionnaires are not collected using sound sampling techniques, often the results can be non-representative of the population—as such a good sample is critical to getting representative results based on questionnaires. Questionnaire are of different types as per Paul: 1)Structured Questionnaire. 2)Unstructured Questionnaire. 3)Open ended Questionnaire. 4)Close ended Questionnaire. 5)Mixed Questionnaire. 6)Pictorial Questionnaire. Response rate (survey) In survey research, response rate , also known as completion rate or return rate ,
403-410: Is integrated in the model TRAPD (Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pretest, and Documentation). A theoretical framework is also provided by sociolinguistics , which states that to achieve the equivalent communicative effect as the source language, the translation must be linguistically appropriate while incorporating the social practices and cultural norms of the target language. Besides translators,
434-529: Is that often the people who do return the questionnaire are those who have a very positive or a very negative viewpoint and want their opinion heard. The people who are most likely unbiased either way typically do not respond because it is not worth their time. One key concern with questionnaires is that they may contain quite large measurement errors. These errors can be random or systematic. Random errors are caused by unintended mistakes by respondents, interviewers, and/or coders. Systematic error can occur if there
465-525: Is the number of people who answered the survey divided by the number of people in the sample . It is usually expressed in the form of a percentage . The term is also used in direct marketing to refer to the number of people who responded to an offer. The general consensus in academic surveys is to choose one of the six definitions summarized by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). These definitions are endorsed by
496-661: The National Research Council and the Journal of the American Medical Association, among other well recognized institutions. They are: The six AAPOR definitions vary with respect to whether or not the surveys are partially or entirely completed and how researchers deal with unknown nonrespondents. Definition #1, for example, does NOT include partially completed surveys in the numerator, while definition #2 does. Definitions 3–6 deal with
527-549: The Spanish monarchy to have better control over the people and the politics in New Spain. However, not all major cities and regions are accounted for because not all local officials returned the questionnaire or perhaps their response did not survive. Along with this, since all people were allowed to send in a map it showed the bias of each social class and represented common issues of the time. Nevertheless, this scientific process of data collection and statistics essentially built
558-568: The consequences of lower response rates until recently. Such studies have finally been conducted in recent years, and several conclude that the expense of increasing the response rate frequently is not justified given the difference in survey accuracy. One early example of a finding was reported by Visser, Krosnick, Marquette and Curtin (1996) who showed that surveys with lower response rates (near 20%) yielded more accurate measurements than did surveys with higher response rates (near 60 or 70%). In another study, Keeter et al. (2006) compared results of
589-508: The differences in proportions of people giving a particular answer ranged from 4 percentage points to 8 percentage points. A study by Curtin et al. (2000) tested the effect of lower response rates on estimates of the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS). They assessed the impact of excluding respondents who initially refused to cooperate (which reduces the response rate 5–10 percentage points), respondents who required more than five calls to complete
620-577: The end because the respondent is in "response mode." Also, when completing an online questionnaire, the progress bars lets the respondent know that they are almost done so they are more willing to answer more difficult questions. Classification , or demographic question should be at the end because typically they can feel like personal questions which will make respondents uncomfortable and not willing to finish survey. Within social science research and practice, questionnaires are most frequently used to collect quantitative data using multi-item scales with
651-432: The fact that respondents must be able to read the questions and respond to them. Thus, for some demographic groups conducting a survey by questionnaire may not be concretely feasible. One of the earliest questionnaires was Dean Milles' Questionnaire of 1753. A distinction can be made between questionnaires with questions that measure separate variables, and questionnaires with questions that are aggregated into either
SECTION 20
#1732772141186682-399: The following characteristics: Main modes of questionnaire administration include: Questionnaires are translated from a source language into one or more target languages, such as translating from English into Spanish and German. The process is not a mechanical word placement process. Best practice includes parallel translation, team discussions, and pretesting with real-life people, and
713-481: The interview (reducing the response rate about 25 percentage points), and those who required more than two calls (a reduction of about 50 percentage points). They found no effect of excluding these respondent groups on estimates of the ICS using monthly samples of hundreds of respondents. For yearly estimates, based on thousands of respondents, the exclusion of people who required more calls (though not of initial refusers) had
744-499: The lands, peoples, and trade routes. The value of these questionnaires continues to grow over time due to these surveys being first-person information. These extensive questionnaires have provided incredibly rich information with regard to 16th century ethnic groups in Mesoamerica . These questionnaires included questions regarding politics, taxes paid, the natural environment and resources, population history, settlement patterns,
775-482: The language, markets and trade, native history and customs, maps, and the progress of the missionary work program. These maps were created by indigenous people, sailors, local officials, and other individuals in New Spain. Some of them that were requested were often commissioned by artists and have now been linked to the Casta paintings of the period. These surveys were reported back to Spain's King Phillip II and allowed
806-716: The questionnaire can have more problems than benefits. For example, unlike interviews, the people conducting the research may never know if the respondent understood the question that was being asked. Also, because the questions are so specific to what the researchers are asking, the information gained can be minimal. Often, questionnaires such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator , give too few options to answer; respondents can answer either option but must choose only one response. Questionnaires also produce very low return rates, whether they are mail or online questionnaires. The other problem associated with return rates
837-444: The respondent to formulate his own answer, whereas a closed-ended question asks the respondent to pick an answer from a given number of options. The response options for a closed-ended question should be exhaustive and mutually exclusive. Four types of response scales for closed-ended questions are distinguished: A respondent's answer to an open-ended question is coded into a response scale afterward. An example of an open-ended question
868-442: The response rate would be 25.7%. A survey’s response rate is the result of dividing the number of people who were interviewed by the total number of people in the sample who were eligible to participate and should have been interviewed. A low response rate can give rise to sampling bias if the nonresponse is unequal among the participants regarding exposure and/or outcome. Such bias is known as nonresponse bias . For many years,
899-473: The responses, this is not always the case. Questionnaires have advantages over some other types of survey tools in that they are cheap, do not require as much effort from the questioner as verbal or telephone surveys, and often have standardized answers that make it simple to compile data. However, such standardized answers may frustrate users as the possible answers may not accurately represent their desired responses. Questionnaires are also sharply limited by
930-597: The unknown eligibility of potential respondents who could not be contacted. For example, there is no answer at the doors of 10 houses you attempted to survey. Maybe 5 of those you already know house people who qualify for your survey based on neighbors telling you whom lived there, but the other 5 are completely unknown. Maybe the dwellers fit your target population, maybe they don't. This may or may not be considered in your response rate, depending on which definition you use. Example: if 1,000 surveys were sent by mail, and 257 were successfully completed (entirely) and returned, then
961-401: Was no significant difference between responders and nonresponders in terms of any gastrointestinal symptoms or specific medical diagnosis. Nevertheless, in spite of these recent research studies, a higher response rate is preferable because the missing data is not random. There is no satisfactory statistical solution to deal with missing data that may not be random. Assuming an extreme bias in