A fixed set of written questions answered by many people, giving comparable, countable responses.
- +Fits Positivist Epistemology, Critical Realist Epistemology
- –Tension with Phenomenological Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology
Key thinkers: Floyd Fowler, Don Dillman, A.N. Oppenheim
The longer story
Questionnaire design is harder than it looks. Every question is a choice about what to ask and how to ask it. Closed questions give you numbers you can count; open questions give you words you must interpret. Question order matters. Wording matters enormously—small changes produce different responses. Piloting catches problems before you scale up. The art is translating your research questions into questions people can actually answer. Bad questionnaires produce confident-looking garbage.