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Computerized Business Questionnaires (308245)

Keywords: Business surveys, Questionnaire design, Information technologgy

Business surveys start with a request to the management followed by a decision on who should act as respondent(s). Thus, the path to the respondent is a two-step process. Next, the response process itself can also be divided into two. Because much of the information asked for is found in different internal sources, an internal data collection is needed together with the data collection run by the surveyor. Facilitating these internal processes should be part of the questionnaire design.

When it comes to the questionnaire, there are three challenges with survey questions; specifications of what belongs and does not belong to the concepts used in the questions, delineations of what the relevant units are, and delineations of what time period the respondents should report from.

Computerization does not automatically change business questionnaires to the better but can be used to address some of the challenges related both to the data collection process and to different aspects of business survey questions. What can be gained by computerization will be discussed under the headings «Source-oriented instruments», «Combined communication means» and «Designed dialogues».