Designing a Survey
Upper Intermediate (B2)
Campus life
American Accent
63s
A student and his tutor discuss the questionnaire for his research project, including how many people to survey, how to avoid bias and which types of questions to use.
Vocabulary Highlights
- bias /ˈbaɪəs/
- An unfair influence that makes results or opinions lean one way instead of being balanced.
- "Asking only your friends will introduce bias into the survey." — unbalanced results
- "The judge was accused of bias toward the home team." — unfair preference
- "We all have a bias toward information that supports what we already believe." — a natural tendency
Dialogue Transcript
Speaker 1:
So, how's the questionnaire for your commuting project coming along?
Speaker 2:
Pretty well, I think. I've drafted about twenty questions, but I'm not sure how many people I should survey.
Speaker 1:
For a project this size, I'd aim for at least a hundred and fifty responses, so your results are actually meaningful.
Speaker 2:
Okay. I was planning to just send it to people in my dorm, though.
Speaker 1:
That's where you might run into problems with bias. Students in one building probably have very similar habits.
Speaker 2:
Right, that makes sense. Maybe I could hand it out at the train station as well?
Speaker 1:
Good thinking. And try to mix closed questions, like multiple choice, with a few open-ended ones.
Speaker 2:
So I should avoid asking things like, don't you think driving is bad for the planet?
Speaker 1:
Definitely. That's a leading question, and it pushes people toward a particular answer.
Speaker 2:
Got it. I'll rewrite those and send you a revised version by Friday.
Ready to shadow this lesson?
Practice in Shadowee with interactive phrase-by-phrase audio playback, Echo mode, and Focus mode.
Start Practice Now