Last December we conduct a study, a UAI study for a baby brand with so many baby products. After several meetings to prepare the study, we managed to construct the questionnaire and to my surprise it came out with hundred of pages. Well it was difficult to ask the marketing to reduce the questions because they thought all those questions were important.
We tried to find a solution, we would pre-test the questionnaire and limit the time. The rersult was every respondents would only be asked 2 categories.
Then the fieldowork started. I tried to supervise some respondents..... And i had a very interesting experience. The respondent that we interviewed was a mom with 2 babies, one was 3 months old and the other nearly 2 years. At first the interview run smothly because all babies were taking a nap. In the middle, the youngest was up and was crying ....hungry. So the mom gave milk and we were waiting. Then before the milking time over, the eldest was up and also cried. So the situation became uncontrollable. The interviewer tried hard to finish all questions and the mom was very busy and panic calming the babies. Finally her answers were not consistent, in the previous question she answered 'A' while in the other she answered 'B' so the interviewer kept go and forth to clarify the answer. Interview that should finish in one and half hour, finally finish in 4 hrs with a question mark on its reliability of answer.
I learn something from this, it is important to keep the questionnairer simple and short, no need for the nice to have questions. It will be useless if the respondent can answer all questions but the reliability is in a big question mark because respondent could not concentrate in answering the questions.
