BHO2434 Consumer Behaviour | Survey Administration Process

Based on the questionnaires designed by all students, a final questionnaire will be developed by the unit coordinator. In pair pilot test this Final Questionnaire by administering it to ten people by way of a convenience sampling technique. These people must all be over 18 years old and have previously travelled either domestically or internationally or both and bought luxury goods and products during their trips. You can administer the questionnaire face-to-face, by telephone or online. All respondents will be asked to sign that their completion of the questionnaire is authentic to verify the fieldwork component of the assignment has been properly completed.

Introduction

Questionnaire can be described as a vital research instrument that consists of a series of questions and it is used to gather information from the respondents. Questionnaires can be of different types and they can be in the written form, and are thus carried out through post, computer, telephone, or by face to face. Questionnaires provides the efficient, quick and cheap way of gaining large chunk of information through a small or large number of samples (Neuman 2012). This study is based on designing and developing a questionnaire that will help in conducting a pair pilot test for the administration of the final questionnaire. The study will also cite the reasons for selecting a particular method of administration the survey, was the administration process a success, what are the suggestions of improving the administration procedure, changes that can be brought to the questionnaire before beginning the procedure if administering the survey to a larger group, and a final reflection on the key lessons learnt from the administration procedure.

Administ

ration procedure and its rationale

The administration procedure selected for this study is a face to face administration of the questionnaire. Face to face is selected because it enables the interviewer to directly ask the respondents in person and is similar to conducting an interview. This allows an interviewer to explain every question to the respondent and helps the interviewer to probe out the answer. It has an advantage over the telephonic interviews, the respondents are than willing to give longer periods of time to provide responses to the questions that are asked face to face through a questionnaire that has already been designed. The face to face interviews is selected due to it dynamic nature and the questions although set out already, there is a big chance of reducing any wrong information that might enter in to the responses. The face to face interviews is conducted depending on the availability of the person, and it can be longer than the other administering procedures. This sort of administering procedure leads to accurate responses and tend to have higher response rates (Irvine, Drew and Sainsbury 2013).

Advantages of face to face administration of questionnaire:

• Accurate screening: face to face administration helps in accurate screening and this prevents the respondent to provide the wrong information related to race, age, and gender. This is however possible on the line conduct of the questionnaire surveys. For the purpose of the data analysis, the data entered can be considered to be true.
  
  
• Capture non-verbal and verbal ques- face to face administration process is no denial that it captures the non-verbal and the verbal ques. However, this method can also highlight the body language of a respondent.
  
  
• Keep focus- the interviewer has the control over the respondents and has the ability to keep a focus of the respondent on to the responses, thus tracking the completion of the interview (Szolnoki and Hoffmann 2013).

Disadvantages of face to face administration of questionnaire:

• Limited sample size- the size of the interview is dependent on to the number of the people that are interviewing or administering the questionnaire. Similarly, the number of sample size is also dependent on to the number of the qualified respondents.
  
  
• Manual entry of data- if the questionnaire is administered manually then the data needs to be entered manually or it is scanned. If there is a need to scan the document then the cost of the process rises significantly.
  Accordingly, the process of manual data entry can elongate the survey.
  
  
• Quality of the data by interviewer- the quality of data received will depend significantly on the interviewer’s ability to gain data from the respondents. Thus, it is important to mention that some of the interviews or surveys will include the data from the ow biases of the one who is conducting the interview (Christensen et al., 2013).

Was the administration procedure a success?

The administration procedure selected for the study can be termed as a success considering the questionnaire and the target population that has been sought to carry out the pilot test. The respondents were able to understand the questions but the sometimes they were taking a bit more time to answer the question considering the length of the questionnaire (Robb, Gatting and Wardle 2017). However, the respondents were asking questions if it was okay to mention information regarding the trip that they have conducted more than 12 months. One question which the majority of the respondents were eager to skip or rather unwilling to go through were the questions that emphasized on the shopping motivation. The set of the questions were significantly lengthy for some of the respondents. However, the average amount of time taken by each of the respondents to compete the survey is 15 minutes and a maximum of 20 minutes for some respondents.

Improvements in the administration procedure

The procedure selected for the polit study is a face to face administration of questionnaire. However, considering the structure of the questionnaire, the language used is lucid with details that require some time to answer. The best way to conduct the survey for the pilot study could have been done through the post. The Questionnaires can be sent to designated respondents that are aged 18 and are the residents of Australia. Providing the questionnaire through the post could have provided the respondents an ample amount of time to answer the questionnaire and then send back the same to the designated address. This could have eliminated the need to conduct a elongated interview and the respondents can at go through the details of the sections that require more time to answer (Wiersma 2013).

Changes to be made in the questionnaire

The questionnaire although framed professionally, however certain questions could have been changed to make it more relevant and easier to answer. The sample size selected for the pilot study is only 10 people and each of them must be 18 years of age. Thus, there are certain questions that could have been changed to make the questionnaire look more appealing to the respondents. The 3^rd question that asks whether the respondent have travelled in the last 12 months and have bought any luxury item. The time period of 12 months can be changed to 2 years, to include a greater number of respondents. The reason being that not all respondent travelled within the last 12 months. A larger time frame could have included more respondents. Similarly, the last question number 19 can be replaced with question like place of birth in Australia. Question number 1 already emphasizes on the fact that whether the respondent is an Australian resident/citizen or not. Thus, there is no need add another question of whether the respondent is born in Australia or not. The questions are already elaborative and contains an exhaustive list of different types of questions, thus there is no need to add any more question into the questionnaire.

Reflection on the administration process

The course work demands the application of a questionnaire to analyze the certain behavioral aspects of the consumers and the way consumers perceive the luxury items. It is important to mention that the initially the face to face administration of the questionnaire is used to conduct the pilot study (Oltmann 2016). The survey administration process provided an ample scope to interview and ask questions to the respondents face to face and this is done to reduce any kind of confusion that might arise due to the administration of the questionnaire. The key lesson learnt pertains to the way the survey was conducted and it is ethically right to not to reveal the names of the respondents if they are unwilling to take up the survey or unwilling to reveal their name (Sieber 2012).

Conclusion

From the above study it can be concluded that, Questionnaires can be of different types and they can be in the written form, and are thus carried out through post, computer, telephone, or by face to face. Questionnaires provides the efficient, quick and cheap way of gaining large chunk of information through a small or large number of samples. This study provided a insight into the face to face administration of questionnaire Face to face is selected because it enables the interviewer to directly ask the respondents in person and is similar to conducting an interview. This allows an interviewer to explain every question to the respondent and helps the interviewer to probe out the answer.

References

Christensen, A.I., Ekholm, O., Glümer, C. and Juel, K., 2013. Effect of survey mode on response patterns: comparison of face-to-face and self-administered modes in health surveys. The European Journal of Public Health, 24(2), pp.327-332.

Irvine, A., Drew, P. and Sainsbury, R., 2013. ‘Am I not answering your questions properly?’Clarification, adequacy and responsiveness in semi-structured telephone and face-to-face interviews. Qualitative Research, 13(1), pp.87-106.

Neuman, W.L., 2012. Designing the Face-to-Face Survey. In Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences (pp. 227-248). Springer, New York, NY.

Oltmann, S.M., 2016. Qualitative interviews: A methodological discussion of the interviewer and respondent contexts. In Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 17, No. 2, p. 1).

Robb, K.A., Gatting, L. and Wardle, J., 2017. What impact do questionnaire length and monetary incentives have on mailed health psychology survey response?. British journal of health psychology, 22(4), pp.671-685.

Sieber, J.E. ed., 2012. The ethics of social research: Surveys and experiments. Springer Science & Business Media.

Szolnoki, G. and Hoffmann, D., 2013. Online, face-to-face and telephone surveys—Comparing different sampling methods in wine consumer research. Wine Economics and Policy, 2(2), pp.57-66.

Wiersma, W., 2013. The validity of surveys: online and offline. Oxford Internet institute, 18(3), pp.321-340.