In a short essay, discuss ethical issues of questionnaire design related to a) the researcher/respondent relationship, and b) the researcher/client relationship

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

a. researcher/respondent relationship - In consideration of the respondents, questions that are confusing, exceed the respondents' ability, are difficult, or are otherwise improperly worded should be avoided. When asking sensitive questions, researchers should attempt to minimize the respondents' discomfort. It should be made clear at the beginning of the questionnaire that respondents are not obligated to answer any question that makes them uncomfortable. Similarly, overly long questionnaires should be avoided. As a general guideline, the following are considered overly long: a personal, in-home interview lasting over 60 minutes, a telephone interview over 30 minutes, a mall-intercept interview over 30 minutes, a mail or electronic interview over 30 minutes. Overly long questionnaires are burdensome on the respondents and adversely affect the quality of responses.
b. the researcher/client relationship - Finally, the researcher has the ethical responsibility to design a questionnaire that obtains the required data in an unbiased manner. Deliberately biasing the questionnaire in a desired direction-for example, by asking leading questions-cannot be condoned. In deciding the question structure, the most appropriate rather than the most convenient option should be adopted, as illustrated by the next example. If the questionnaire is not thoroughly pretested, an ethical breach has occurred.