Item Writing and Questionnaire Design 2025

SHORT COURSE DESCRIPTION

Researchers often need to develop questionnaires to measure behaviors, attitudes, personality attributes, opinions, and other non-cognitive constructs. Even though many guidelines for questionnaire development have been offered, best practices in this area are not widely understood. The instructor will review the research on such topics as the impact of vaguely worded and of negatively worded items, the optimal number of scale points, whether scale points should be labeled or unlabeled, whether to include a neutral option, and how item order effects may influence responses. The instructor will also introduce and discuss theories of response processing, and how these can inform our understanding of the effects of item characteristics. Furthermore, the course will cover best practices in terms of the formatting of questionnaires, both paper and on-line format.

The workshop also offers an interactive Q&A session where participants can get feedback on the items they are currently developing or revising, or discuss any specific issues about item writing with the instructor. We encourage participants to bring with them items they are developing for use in this part of the workshop, although it is not required. Participants who do not have items under development are also encouraged to take part in the discussion.

 

DATES AND TIMES

Feb 14, 2025 (Fri)

10am-5pm Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5)

The instructor will determine timing of breaks.

 

COURSE FEES

Professional: $225

Full-time student*: $95

 

*Full-time students need to submit student status proof at https://go.umd.edu/CILVR-Student-24 to request a discount code prior to registration.

 

*Course fee will be waived for HDQM Department faculty and degree-seeking students, although the UMD IT department will charge you a tech fee to register ($10). HDQM department registrants can request the discount code by submitting the following form: https://go.umd.edu/CILVR-HDQM-24.

 

 

HOW TO REGISTER

 

Prior to registration, participants not affiliated with UMD need to get a valid UMD associate account in order to register for the short course and access the course content. Participants can visit https://identity.umd.edu/id/associate/registration to create an UMD associate account. For more details about the UMD associate account, please click here.

 

For UMD affiliated participants, you may register using your existing UMD directory ID. 

 

To request the promotional code prior to registration: 

- Full-time students can submit the student status proof at https://go.umd.edu/CILVR-Student-24 to request a student discount code prior to registration. Note that it may take 2-3 business days for your request to be processed.

- HDQM department registrants can request the HDQM discount code by submitting the following form: https://go.umd.edu/CILVR-HDQM-24. Note that it may take 2-3 business days for your request to be processed.

 

SCOPE OF SHORT COURSE

This short course is designed for researchers who want to know more about the development and use of questionnaires that include attitude, personality, opinion, or other noncognitive measures. Participants will be presented with examples of optimal and non-optimal questionnaire items and formatting and will be provided opportunities to get feedback on writing and revising items during the Q&A. Participants are encouraged to bring items they have written or are in the process of writing to work on during the short course. During the second part of the course participants will have the opportunity to obtain feedback on these items from the course instructor and from other course participants.

 

TARGET AUDIENCE

The target audience for this course is any individual with an interest in best practices in questionnaire item writing and design. This population includes all levels of graduate students, assuming a basic knowledge of research design and statistical analysis, and researchers who are working within academic institutions or research agencies.

 

REQUISITE KNOWLEDGE

Required:  Basic proficiency in descriptive and inferential statistics

Not required but advantageous: Some item writing experience

 

 

LOCATION AND PLATFORM

 

• The course materials and meeting links will be posted on the course page through UMD Open Learning (https://umd.catalog.instructure.com/)
• This workshop will be delivered entirely online via the video conferencing software Zoom (https://zoom.us/).
• Within a limited time, the video recordings of the short course will be accessible for both synchronous and asynchronous participants on the course page.

 

 

IMPORTANT COURSE DETAILS

 

Platform: Participants need to have a valid UMD associate ID in order to register for the short course and access the course content. Participants can visit https://identity.umd.edu/id/associate/registration to create an UMD associate account. For more details please click here.

 

Format: Participants will receive a personalized login code to use on their own computer to access a reliable live-stream of the short course over Zoom, showing the instructor as well as the handouts.

 

Materials: Participants will receive electronic copies of the short course materials, as well as any other relevant materials or information.

 

Timing/access: Participants may choose to watch the stream synchronously, or may elect to watch a recording of the short course asynchronously, or both. Recordings will be available to participants for six months following the end of the short course. This is especially useful for on-line participants in different time zones who may choose to watch at some later time than (but within six months of) the actual short course time. (Asynchronous participation does not include real-time chat with other on-line participants, although a visual record of prior chats will be viewable).

 

Technical support: Participants are responsible for installing the conferencing software Zoom on their own electronic devices and for obtaining a Zoom account that allows the participant to join Zoom meetings and webinars hosted by external organizations. Participants are assumed to be able to secure a reliable computer, internet browser, and Wi-Fi connection. Challenges at the user end must be resolved by the user. Fortunately, because the short course is recorded, users experiencing technical challenges can still “catch up” by watching the recordings to which they have access.

 

Content support: During the lecture, real-time content support for on-line participants is mostly limited to real-time chat with the on-line (Zoom) participant community and any quantitative methodology doctoral students who might also be participating. Participants may have direct interactions with the instructor in some format during the practice sessions. On-line participants may e-mail the instructor for further content support that cannot be addressed in real-time.

 

THE INSTRUCTOR

Dr. Laura M. Stapleton is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has taught courses on multilevel modeling, causal inference, and the analysis of complex survey data at the University of Maryland and formerly taught structural equation modeling and survey research methods at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Stapleton has published several book chapters on analysis of data from complex sampling designs and has published methodological work in this area in professional journals, including Structural Equation Modeling and Multivariate Behavioral Research. She has been funded by an Institute of Education Sciences methodology grant to evaluate strategies for analyzing NCES data. She holds a B.A in Economics from the University of Michigan, an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation from the University of Maryland. She may be reached at lstaplet@umd.edu.

 

REFUND POLICY

Full refund if cancellation occurs at least 10 business days prior to the workshop date; 50% refund if within 10 days of the first day of the course.

 

CONTACT

For any further questions, please contact itemwriting.cilvr@gmail.com

To request a copy of the payment receipt, please contact the OES office at oes-finance@umd.edu.

 

CILVR Short Course Series

• Analysis of Complex Survey Data (from NCES)
• Introduction to Multilevel Modeling
• Structural Equation Modeling: From Beginner to Intermediate
• Introduction to Longitudinal Structural Equation and Latent Growth Modeling
• Item Writing and Questionnaire Design
• Introduction to Meta-Analysis
• Applied Causal Inference with Directed Acyclic Graphs
• Introduction to Social Network Analysis

 

Center for Integrated Latent Variable Research (CILVR) at the University of Maryland (UMD)

CILVR is a center whose goal is to serve as a national and international focal point for innovative collaboration, state-of-the-art training, and scholarly dissemination as they relate to the full spectrum of latent variable statistical methods. CILVR is housed within the Quantitative Methodology: Measurement and Statistics (QMMS) program in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland. QMMS faculty are recognized scholars in various facets of latent variable statistical models, whether it be item response theory, latent class analysis, mixture models, latent growth models, or structural equation modeling.