Abstract:

With the objective of a study to develop a questionnaire for the selection of independent retired women to live together in harmony in aging in a co-living building, the question of piloting the inventory questionnaire came to the forefront because of limited resources. This became a great concern and we had to be proactive and find alternative ways of arriving at a viable solution.

After identifying the problems facing aging populations worldwide and looking for solutions, we uncovered a successful co-living model in the Babayagas House in Paris, subsidized by the French government based on individual incomes. We investigated this model.

The method used is of a qualitative nature (Creswell, 2009; Creswell & Poth, 2018) and consisted of a search of the existing recognized well-being questionnaires with key words arrived at from the analysis of co-living members journal entries, the House Charter and documents available in the public domain, using NVivo. We examined features of various materials accessed on-line.

The initial format was revisited to provide more uniformity and was submitted for annotations, and following analysis of comments we also developed a ‘brief’ version of the questionnaire, further eliminating repetition and items that were closely connected.

Among the results, we uncovered the more general aspects listed below, and also more detailed information. Using this research approach allowed for great gains in time and also enabled the hiring of several research assistants with each taking care of one section. Given the fact that these items came from questionnaires that are widely used, the only concern was left around the organization. The Research Assistants learned how to carry out data analysis using NVivo to match the categories that were uncovered with items in existing questionnaires. They learned how to organize the questions around major themes. As they learned to refine the questionnaire they also learned how to eliminate some questions and reduce the number of items. Finally they also learned how to be selective and produce bot a full questionnaire and a 'brief' version that was more user-friendly.

After collating all the items, we arrived at a consensus quite easily. One RA, more specialized in testing, recommended a five point Likert scale throughout, instead of keeping varied formats as in the original questionnaires. Following field-testing of the full version through annotations, it was uncovered that if the questionnaires were to be used directly by the targeted population, instead of administrators interviewing potential candidates, the number of items needed to be further reduced. As well, we discovered that typical questionnaires sometimes presented questions in an odd way and a more systematic way to present questions is a time-saving device.

We will present the different steps in detail and provide examples to illustrate the processes.

Keywords:

facilitating research; search for questionnaire items; annotations instead of field-testing