How to Develop a Rationale and a Survey Questionnaire on the Issue of open-mindedness: A General Framework

Topic: Open-mindedness towards Muslims

By Dr S A Hamed Hosseini This framework in designed for the purpose of writing rationale and survey questionnaires by Dr S A Hamed Hosseini which cannot be used or cited without his permission

Rationale
Introduction
Topic is introduced, why it is important to study the subject

Research Question:

How open-minded are Australian people towards Muslim communities? And what social factors influence their views?

Conceptual Framework:
Only the core concepts like Open-mindedness towards .... Clarify what you mean by open-mindedness towards Muslims/Islam Clarify the dimensions and the operationalization (how you can make the concepts measurable) Social Context, potential respondents, method of administrating your questionnaire, NB. When we talk about the Dimensions in the rationale's conceptual framework, we mean the dimensions of your core concept (not social factors like age or regional residence etc.; these social factors must only be discussed in your theoretical argument section). Therefore, if for instance you are working on Open-mindedness towards homosexuality, you can consider emotional and/or relational and/or policy-law related dimensions for your open-mindedness concept. For instance the emotional would be the positive or negative feelings that people show towards homosexuals, the legal dimension would be their views about the legalization of same sex marriage, child adoption etc. and the relational would be their willingness to have relationships with homosexuals (either in their friendship networks or at work etc.) Then you need to operationalize each dimension by telling your reader how you are going to measure each of these three dimensions. The best way to do this is just simply listing the criteria you will be using to measure or design questions; for instance for the

1|(c) Hamed Hosseini, 2012.

legal dimension a criterion is the the level of agreement/disagreement the person shows in relation to the issue of legalizing same sex marriage in Australia, etc.; or in terms of relational dimension the level of peoples willingness to have/accept a homosexual as their neighbor/member of family/relatives/club/neighborhood. (to have a better idea, you may consult the Social Cohesion Summary Report available on BB and discussed in the class) In terms of the 'social context' (is your potential respondents are going to be recruited from Australia, NSW, America? or any particular ethnic group in Australia) - Just as simple as this!; then who are your potential respondents taken from this context (equal number of male vs. female, only heterosexuals, adolescent people, not younger than 18 for instance, etc.?) and how you would like to admin your questionnaire (self-completion mailed, emailed, assisted phone interview etc?). Of course your questions in the questionnaire should correspond to your context and potential respondents.

Theoretical Argument
Do not forget references to the literature; write a piece on social factors, and why you are considering them (your reasoning and backed up by the literature)

Hypotheses:
H1. Being from a migrant family (of at least of the one parents) will make the individual more likely to be open-minded towards Muslims. H2. H3. H4. H?. Last Paragraph How questions in the questionnaire are related to the concepts and theory; for instance Q1 to 5 measure demographical features of the population, Q12, 13 and 14 are related to H2, H3 and H4, etc. NB. You do not need to create Hypotheses for every social factor mentioned in your theoretical argument but you need to have questions in your questionnaire for every social factor.

References:
Can be at the end of this document, after the questionnaire, if some questions are adopted from external sources. Better to paraphrase instead of directly quote questions.

Questionnaire

2|(c) Hamed Hosseini, 2012.