The best practices for survey research include selecting an appropriate topic for the survey being constructed. Topics should be descriptive, exploratory, and explanatory to participants for a better understanding of the survey. It is important to have both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions are those in which the respondent is asked to provide their own answers. Closed-ended questions are those in which the respondent has to select an answer from a list provided by the researchers. Questions and statements must be clear, and double-barreled questions must be avoided within surveys. This will prevent any confusion about what is being asked of the participants. Negative items should also be avoided; for example, the word “NOT” should not be used in survey questions. 

For this research question, we are studying: “How do parents of 3-5 year olds navigate the perceived benefits and risks of their child’s technology use and how does it influence household rules?” My dependent variable is the risk of screentime in a child’s development. To measure this dependent variable, the survey question “Do you see screen time as a risk to your child’s development?” will be used. This question is asked using a scale of 0-10, with 0 being not at all and 10 being a great amount. 

My independent variable from this is “Does your household have rules about screen time?” The attributes for this question are Yes, No, Sometimes, and I don’t know. This question is based on a simple multiple-choice format. These questions are well-written because there are no double negatives and no double-barreled questions. The questions are simple and straight to the point. With the two questions selected, one is open-ended and one is closed-ended.