I asked a question on twitter today: Do you consider “surveys” to be different from “questionnaires”? If so, how?
This question struck me as I was editing a paper where I was describing a survey (or is it a questionnaire?) that we used to collect data from Mechanical Turk. I was about to use the terms interchangeably when it occurred to me that they might mean slightly different things (and of course I’d be ridiculed for the rest of my adult life if I screwed this one up). The replies I received had both different and similar perspectives, at times, on the difference between a survey and a questionnaire. Here are a few of their comments:
One is a superset of the other [questionnaire :: survey]:
“A questionnaire is a survey but a survey doesn’t have to be a questionnaire.”
A survey is more relevant to people within a community of practice:
“A questionnaire is more open to outsiders while a survey is for people inside the relevant community.” This, too, hints that a questionnaire is more broad.
A survey allows for solid conclusions:
“‘Survey’ feels like something for a rigorous statistically oriented outcome; ‘questionnaire’ feels aimless, a fishing expedition.” And another: “My understanding is that survey generates quantitative data; questionnaires, qualitative”.
Again this suggests that a survey is more focused (questionnaire more general).
“Maybe a difference is the end goal of the information?” No further clarification on this one. Which is which?
Yet others thought that a survey would produce more general findings: “My gut feeling is that the data from a “survey’ is intended to be studied in the aggregate (e.g. 60% of coffee drinkers…), whereas the data from a questionnaire is linked to the individual—and perhaps to other data that the individual provides (e.g. the more people report liking coffee, the faster they are at some other task).”
What do you think?
4 Comments
Questionnaire :: survey
According to some quick etymological research, survey comes from the French word surveeir, which means “to oversee.” It became nounified over the next couple hundred years to mean “a systematic collection of data on opinions.” That data collection can be done via questionnaire, which is another French word for Plain Old List of Questions.
Disclaimer: no linguists were harmed in the making of this comment, although I make no warranty that they won’t be pained to read it.
A questionnaire is an instrument (e.g., a set of questions). A survey is the measurement of some sample or population with such an instrument.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other…
I think if anything, the confusion goes to show that we should always be explicit in our intentions when administering the one or the other!
Recently I’ve been fascinated more by how purported “surveys” are actually gathering essentially useless information (whether it’s with AT&T, MUNI, or whatever). Any survey/questionnaire horror stories to share?
Simply put, a survey is the entire research undertaken while a questionnaire is one of the methods (under the quantitative) to achieve results/ data from the survey. Other methods include focus groups interviews, telephone interviews, personal interviews etc, all can be utilized in a survey…