The introduction is your participant’s first impression of the survey, and one of your only chances to convince participants to take and complete your questionnaire. Your introduction should cover all of the information you need to paint a clear picture of your research and provide the information necessary to obtain consent of participation from your respondents.
Introducing your Research
The introduction can be approached by answering the following questions with the participants’ perspective in mind (Avineri, 2017):
- Who: Who is doing the research?
- What: What is the research? What is the general topic being studied?
- When: How long will it take to complete the survey? When will the research be completed?
- Why: Why is the study being conducted? Why have the specific participants been chosen? Why is the study important? What does this study hope to accomplish in a larger context?
- How: How will the data be used? Will participants be kept anonymous? How will their information be kept confidential?
Considering Other Types of Information
These questions are meant to serve as starting points for writing introductions. There are many other elements that you might want to include depending on the nature of your research. For example, you might want to offer information on:
- The amount of time your survey will take
- Compensation that you are offering for participation, if applicable
- Any expectations you have about how much information you’d like participants to include when they answer your questions
- Prompts to ask for contact information, if your research requires following up with participants
Of course these are just some suggestions for the information you could include in your introduction. You will decide what is needed for your questionnaire.
Obtaining Consent
Your introduction should both convince participants to join your study and allow you to obtain your participants’ consent. In order to accomplish this, an introduction must provide sufficient information for a respondent come to an informed decision regarding their participation. You should remind respondents that they can always opt out of the study and assure them of their confidentiality.
The video below gives some extra insight into writing a good introduction and includes an example.
(UTS Software Engineering, 2014)
For more information, check out these two examples of good introductions.
Personal Project
Use the tips above to both consider what information you are going to include in your introduction and write your first draft. Your IRB response may also include their requirements for what to include in your introduction. Once you have finished your introduction, your questionnaire is complete. Congratulations! However, it is not ready to be sent out just yet. Recall the information included at the beginning of this section (The Design Process) regarding how to best edit and test your questionnaire. Now is a good time to review those steps, so that you can move onto the next section on survey implementation.
It may be helpful to review the Design Process before moving on to the next section on Multilingual Surveys.
