Recent Methods of the Questionnaire Research with the Large Sample Size (5)

Reliability Issue in Responses

Abstract

In 2016, I distributed and collected a self-completion questionnaire for which I obtained 346 responses. Four of the various questions in the questionnaire were multiple choice and the participants were required to select their answers from the fixed options provided for each question. Then, I tallied and analyzed the collected responses in terms of how the participants responded, and how those who did not answer in the prescribed way responded to other questions. Results showed that 7.7% of all questions were not answered according to the instructions given. In addition, the responses of 26 participants who did not follow the instructions or did not respond to two or more checking items tended to differ from the majority. Thus, it is inevitable that some participants do not follow instructions, and tallying their responses with the responses of other serious respondents could be problematic. Currently, we are facing a reliability issue in questionnaire survey responses, and this should be considered in the analysis of actual survey response data.