Hi everyone!

In this week's reading, Writing Good Survey Questions Tips & Advice by UCSD Student Research & Information, discusses what to look out for when writing good survey questions. This reading had lots of useful information. Some that stood out to me included avoiding “wouldn’t it be nice to know” questions, and making sure respondents have “immediate access to the information needed to answer the question” (1). As much as these might seem obvious, they really are things a researcher could look over when writing a survey. A survey of the student population at UC Davis might seem like a perfect opportunity to find out all kinds of information about the students, however, focus is essential in surveying for research. For example, as stated in 8 Types of Survey Questions to Get You All the Data You Need, identifying an intention or goal is the first question a researcher should ask themselves. The researcher has to make sure that the questions are focused, and that the results are attainable, where you won’t receive a bunch of “I don’t know off the top of my head” responses. To further look at where to even begin with a research question, the second article discusses deciding the “type of information needed [...] depth of the information you need” and the “amount of time you respondents have available.” I thought these were very good points to consider at the very start of creating a survey, as setting a goal will help a researcher plan what steps they need to take to achieve that goal, with the steps being the survey questions. While the reading discusses the different types of survey questions possible, like closed-ended vs. open-ended, dichotomous questions, demographic questions, multiple choice, etc., I wonder how to distinguish which types of questions are best for which research goals. I would assume this would mean taking time to break down our research questions and really deciding what we want to find out through our surveys, and start developing questions then, that will be assigned to different “types” of survey questions. One additional component of research that I would add to the information from the two articles this week is considerations of ethics in research. For running experiments and collecting data, the experiment has to go through the IRB, or Institutional Review Board, and be approved for ethics. I attached the APA (American Psychology Association) guidelines for ethics, something for us to keep in mind when brainstorming survey questions.