QUESTIONNAIRE CONSTRUCTION
    General Questionnaire Format
    Formats for Respondents
    Contingency Questions
    Matrix Questions
    Ordering Items in a Questionnaire
    Questionnaire Instructions
    Pretesting the Questionnaire
    A Composite Illustration

    Having created a set of good questions for a questionnaire, attention must also be given to how they are presented.  Indeed, some of the possible formats will shape the questions asked.  For example, contingency questions are only asked of certain respondents, as determined by earlier questions.  For example, we might ask people whether they attended college and then ask those who said "yes" what their majors were.  The question about majors would be a contingency question.

    The matrix question is likely to be familiar to you.  We can create a fixed set of responses--e.g., the Likert categories of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree--and ask respondents to use those possibilities in response to a number of opinion statements.

    As you'll see, formatting concerns, such as the order in which questions are asked can have a strong influence on the answers given, so it's important to pay attention to such matters.