How do you design and implement questionnaires and interviews in Advanced Higher Geography?
Questionnaire and interview design and implementation: writing clear unbiased questions, choosing open and closed formats, sampling respondents, and conducting interviews to gather reliable primary data.
How to design and implement questionnaires and interviews in SQA Advanced Higher Geography: writing clear, unbiased questions, choosing open and closed formats, sampling respondents fairly, and conducting interviews to gather reliable primary data for analysis.
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What this key area is asking
Questionnaires and interviews are the main ways of gathering people's views and behaviour as primary data, and the spec names both design and implementation. You write clear, unbiased questions, choose open and closed formats, sample respondents fairly, and conduct the survey or interview to get reliable data. The marks reward understanding why each design choice improves the quality of the data.
Designing a questionnaire
Design decides data quality. Closed questions produce numbers ready for graphs and statistics; open questions add explanation but are harder to quantify. Wording must avoid leading the respondent, and a pilot catches ambiguous items.
- Closed questions. Tick boxes, scales; quick to answer, easy to quantify.
- Open questions. Free text; rich detail, coded for analysis.
- Sampling. Random or stratified, with a target size, for representativeness.
Questionnaires versus interviews
Questionnaires reach many people and give standardised, quantifiable data, but answers can be shallow and response rates low. Interviews gather depth and allow probing, but are slow, reach fewer people and are harder to quantify. The aim decides the choice: breadth of pattern points to questionnaires; depth of reasons points to interviews.
A routine for designing and running a survey
- Match to the aim. Decide whether breadth (questionnaire) or depth (interview) is needed.
- Write the questions. Clear and unbiased; mix closed and open; order logically.
- Sample and pilot. Choose a representative sample and test the instrument first.
- Implement and record. Approach respondents consistently and record answers for analysis.
Examples in context
Try this
Q1. Give one strength of a questionnaire and one strength of an interview. [2 marks]
- Cue. Questionnaire: reaches many respondents with easily quantified data. Interview: gathers richer detail and allows follow-up questions.
Q2. Why should a questionnaire be piloted before the main survey? [1 mark]
- Cue. To find and remove ambiguous or leading questions before collecting the full data set.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
SQA AH gathering5 marksDescribe how you would design a questionnaire to gather reliable data, and explain the choices you would make.Show worked answer →
A good questionnaire collects the data the aim needs with the least bias. Write clear, short questions, mix closed questions (tick boxes, rating scales) for easy quantitative analysis with a few open questions for detail, avoid leading or ambiguous wording, and order questions logically from easy to sensitive.
A full answer describes the question types and why each is chosen, stresses avoiding leading questions, and sets out a sampling strategy for respondents (random or stratified to represent the population) and a target sample size. The strongest answers add piloting the questionnaire to remove unclear items, and note how closed responses feed directly into graphs and statistical tests.
SQA AH gathering4 marksCompare questionnaires and interviews as methods of gathering primary data, noting a strength of each.Show worked answer →
Questionnaires reach many respondents quickly and produce standardised, easily quantified data, but answers can be shallow and response rates low. Interviews gather richer, more detailed views and allow follow-up questions, but are time-consuming, reach fewer people and are harder to quantify.
Strong answers give a clear strength of each (questionnaires: large representative samples and easy analysis; interviews: depth and the ability to probe), note a limitation of each, and link the choice to the aim: questionnaires suit measuring a pattern across a population, interviews suit understanding reasons and perceptions in depth.
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Sources & how we know this
- Advanced Higher Geography Course Specification — SQA (2019)
- Advanced Higher Geography Specimen Question Paper — SQA (2019)