Research Methods in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

Ambiguous questions

Whilst previous sections have suggested that simple, everyday language should be

used in the wording of questions, sometimes this can lead to ambiguity. Consider

posing the question to different groups of students, ‘What kind of course are you

on?’ This could be answered in terms of degree/HND, sandwich, good, bad, well

organised, interesting, difficult, etc. The likelihood is that a range of replies that had

no relationship to each other would be produced. If answers cannot be compared,

then it becomes impossible to express the data in quantifiable terms. This aspect

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reinforces the need for all surveys to have a pilot stage to test the usefulness of your

questions and thus avoid ambiguity during the main data collection.