NHS Questionnaire - anyone filled it in?

[TPMB12]

Got one through the post. My partner got one a year ago but firm fill it in. So I thought I'd fill it in. I don't know if it's just me and my partner but it's such a badly designed questionnaire.

For example a question about appointments didn't give me one option to select. I know they can't account for opening times for every practise but why put in such precise times? Why not give an other option with space to fill in?if  Our practise has no weekend opening, often Fridays finished at 1pm as the GP that did Fridays wanted an early finish. There's never been a 6:30pm finish or 8:00 am start for nigh on 18 to 20 years after two practises merged.  I might be picky there but throughout the questionnaire I had to tick the one answer that was least wrong or leave it blank.

Anyone with experience of designing questionnaires? Is it really as hard as those running the NHS questionnaire seem to have made it? Universities of Exeter and Bristol iirc. Hardly Mickey Mouse institutions so why the poor questionnaire? Could it be to fix the data in some way?

Anyway I filled it in and wrote a new answer for a few questions. I wonder if it's really worth costing them the second class postage for the useless data they'll get from it. If you've had one,  what did you think about it?

[MikeFromLFE]

It would be instructive to know which bit of the NHS this came from. The NHS doesn't really exist as a single entity.
It sounds as though it might have come from your GP surgery - which might explain the poor quality design.
If it's from your GP it's unlikely to be the same for other YACFers. My dentist sends out questionarres regularly, purporting to be NHS satisfaction surveys when in fact they are fishing for private teeth alignment & whitening work.

[TPMB12]

Part of a national NHS survey afaik. The letter didn't come from our surgery by NHS organisation with the two universities running it. I naturally thought it was a collective by the body overlooking the whole of the NHS but it could be individual trusts but being in the North West England I can't see why the local trust would use SW England universities when there's certainly very good local universities with experience and expertise to run such surveys locally.

I'll dig out the letter again and let you know for sure but I do think it's a nationally organised (England at least).

[barakta]

I discovered one of my hospitals' surveys is a third party organisation and the online versions go straight online in the public domain which is REALLY NOT CLEAR. The printed versions are covered with ads and the staff can be REALLY pushy about giving you them and trying to make you complete them. The explanation for third partyness and stuff is in TINY TINY text at 90 degrees to the rest of the text. You are often not given time to READ it properly cos pushy staff trying to get them back off you.

I sent them some DPA complaints about those and they bullshitted me and refused to make it more clear.

I now bin all the surveys they give me on principle. I don't bin them in front of the staff but if they hassle me I say I'll do it at home. I especially resented staff physically hassling people about the surveys during Covid when it was pointless contact and the hassling woman had her nose sticking out of her mask.

[ian]

Designing questionnaires and surveys is actually a proper job and commands a decent salary if you want to do things right and ensure you ask the right questions, collect the correct data, and together that enables you to do meaningful analyses with that data.

A lot of organizations take the cheap route and plonk someone junior in front or Word or let the technical types just list of the fields in that database that they want filling.