Abstract:

The paper considers important aspects of designing questions for children. It commences with a discussion of the constraints and limitations of conducting questionnaire-based research with children, covering such items as the difficulty of recording non-verbal reactions, and the limited attention span of younger children. From each of the points covered a criterion by which a question may be judged is derived. The paper briefly considers some problems associated with collecting different types of frequently-required data from children. This is followed by a discussion of the benefits of collecting comparative rather than absolute data, and some comments on the analysis of scaled questions.