Self-completion questionnaire

Greek translation: ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

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English term or phrase:	Self-completion questionnaire
Greek translation:	ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο
Entered by:	Assimina Vavoula

16:37 Jan 9, 2010

English to Greek translations [PRO]
Social Sciences - Surveying

English term or phrase: Self-completion questionnaire

Self-completion questionnaires
Advantages
Self-completion questionnaires are usually administered in the form of a postal survey, although other methods of distribution such as fax, e-mail or point of sale questionnaires can be used. Whatever the distribution method, self-completion questionnaires are filled in alone by respondents without help from a researcher. They have a number of advantages.

Self-completion questionnaires will usually be the cheapest method of data collection for most surveys. However, there are many hidden costs such as handling and printing which boost the real cost of postal surveys. The difference in cost between postal and telephone surveys is usually less than most people imagine.
There is clearly no risk of interviewer bias
Most respondents will see a self-completion questionnaire as the least intrusive and most anonymous way of being surveyed.
Self-completion questionnaires are ideally suited to surveys of internal customers. The postal cost can usually be avoided and, where e-mail is feasible, much of the printing and handling costs as well. Most importantly it is easier to implement policies to ensure a good response rate, such as senior management endorsement, and paper questionnaires can be handed out and collected back in at a pre-determined time.
For similar reasons, self completion questionnaires are also good at the point of sale immediately after the ‘customer experience’. It’s a very low cost way of collecting data, but it must not be voluntary, (as in most hotels for example). Voluntary point of sale surveys will almost certainly generate very low response rates and will consequently provide meaningless data.

Disadvantages

As well as being slow, postal surveys tend to suffer from low response rates. The generally accepted figure for an ‘average’ response rate for customer satisfaction surveys by post is 25%, but this masks an extremely wide variation from below 10% to over 90%. Typically, the more important the topic is to the customer, the higher will be the base response rate. For example, a satisfaction survey of new car buyers is likely to generate a higher response rate than a survey by a utility company.
Questionnaires have to be short.
Questions have to be simple. People will tend to make a quick judgement about how time consuming the questionnaire is going to be to fill in, and that will be a combination of the questionnaire’s length and its perceived difficulty. Moreover, since questions cannot be explained to respondents, they do have to be very straight forward.
One of the biggest disadvantages of most forms of self-completion survey is that as soon as you send it out you immediately abdicate control. You lose control over who fills it in and how it is filled in. You may have a painstakingly constructed sample of key decision makers who receive the questionnaire and immediately pass it to a subordinate to complete. You also have no control or knowledge of how they fill it in – whether they rush it and give it very little thought, and even whether they understand the questions or the instructions.
By far the main disadvantage of self-completion questionnaires, however, is the problem of unrepresentative samples. It has been demonstrated by tests that self-completion surveys with low response rates suffer from the problem of ‘non-response bias’. The scores are skewed towards the extremes. In other words the questionnaire is completed by the most satisfied customers as an act of loyalty and by anybody who sees it as a convenient medium for grumbling, moaning and complaining. The problem is that you just do not know what the non-responders think and without surveying them there is no way of finding out. The lower the response rate the bigger the problem of non-response bias. A general rule of thumb in the research industry is that a response rate of at least 50% is required to reduce the problem to acceptable proportions. Many people work on the mistaken principle that to increase the reliability of postal surveys with disappointing response rates they simply need to send more questionnaires out in order to get more back. This is totally mistaken. The problem is not the size of the response but the response rate. Only by improving the response rate can you overcome the problem of non-response bias.

Assimina Vavoula KudoZ activity Questions: 4781 (none open) (134 closed without grading) Answers: 1621 Greece
Local time: 08:16

ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

Explanation:
Σύντομο ερωτηματολόγιο που αποστέλεται συνήθως με το ταχυδρομείο, συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο και αποστέλεται ξανά στον αρχικό αποστολέα.

Selected response from:

sok-kyriazis
Greece
Local time: 08:16

Grading comment

Thanks.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

Summary of answers provided

3 +2

ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

sok-kyriazis

ερωτηματολόγιο αυτο-συμπλήρωσης

marinagr

ερωτηματολόγιο απαντημένο/συμπληρωμένο ατομικά

Magda P.

Answers

24 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +2

self-completion questionnaire

ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

sok-kyriazis
Greece
Local time: 08:16
Native speaker of:

Greek
PRO pts in category: 4

Grading comment

Thanks.

27 mins confidence:

self-completion questionnaire ερωτηματολόγιο αυτο-συμπλήρωσης

Explanation:
...

marinagr
Greece
Local time: 08:16
Native speaker of:

Greek

1 hr confidence:

self-completion questionnaire ερωτηματολόγιο απαντημένο/συμπληρωμένο ατομικά

Explanation:
ή που διεξάγεται ατομικά

Magda P.
Italy
Local time: 07:16
Native speaker of: Greek
PRO pts in category: 4

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Self-completion questionnaire

Greek translation: ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

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Self-completion questionnaire

Greek translation: ερωτηματολόγιο που συμπληρώνεται από τον ερωτώμενο

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