The use of questionnaires from 1996–2019: Increasing but is the quality?

 Questionnaires mentioned in academic research 1996–2019: Rapid increase but declining citation impact

Ruth Fairclough and Mike Thelwall

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Abstract

Questionnaires are a device to elicit human perspectives, self-reports or

knowledge. This article investigates which broad academic fields use ques-

tionnaires, whether this use is increasing, and whether it generates aver-

age citation impact. This is investigated through a nonprobability sample:

articles mentioning questionnaires in their titles, abstracts, or keywords.

This procedure captures a minority of research using questionnaires, with

substantial biases against fields using alternative terminology, such as

‘instrument’ or ‘survey’, or that rarely explicitly mention questionnaires in

titles, abstract or keywords because they play a minor role. The results

suggest that the proportion of journal articles using questionnaires tripled

between 1996 and 2019, and this proportion increased in all 27 broad

Scopus elds. Over the same period, the citation impact of the identified

research declined from above average to below average. Thus, whilst aca-

demic research seems to be increasingly using questionnaires, the quality

or scholarly value of research using questionnaires may be declining.

These are tentative conclusions because of the unknown sampling bias for

the set of questionnaire-based articles analysed.