What Is a Standard Questionnaire, and Where Do You Find a Validated Version?

Search for "standard questionnaire" and you will find hundreds of files for sale, all labelled "validity and reliability confirmed." Some are genuine instruments. Some are unsourced translations of a foreign scale. Some are another student's home-made questionnaire that simply picked up the word "standard." Thesis examiners can tell the difference, usually at the defense. This article explains what "standard" actually means, where to find a trustworthy version, what matters about licensing, and how to spot a suspicious file.

If you haven't yet decided between a standard and a researcher-made instrument, the short comparison is in our questionnaire design guide; here we assume you want to use a standard one.

What does "standard" mean? Five conditions

A questionnaire is standard when it has these five things, not when it is famous or has appeared in a few theses:

1. A named author and an original source. The developer, the year and the paper that introduced it; a paper you can actually find and read.
2. A psychometric development process. Validity and reliability were reported in that paper or later ones, on a described sample.
3. Fixed scoring rules. Number of items, response scale, reverse-scored items, subscales, score range and, where they exist, cut-off points.
4. A validated version in your language. A properly translated version whose validity and reliability were tested in a local sample and published.
5. Norms, if you will interpret an individual's score. Usually unnecessary for correlational research; necessary for screening or counselling.

A questionnaire that has none of these, however official it looks, is methodologically researcher-made and needs the full validity and reliability process.

Translation, validation, norming: three different jobs

	What it does	Output	Enough for a thesis?
Translation	Renders the text in another language	Translated text	No; you still need at least content validity and reliability
Validation	Tests the validity and reliability of the translated version in a local sample	Factor structure, alpha, correlations with other measures	Yes, cited
Norming	Establishes reference scores in a representative sample	Percentile or standard-score (e.g. T-score) tables	Only when you compare one person's score with the population

One thing to watch: many papers are titled "norming of …" but their method section reports only validity and reliability, with no norm tables at all. Read the method, not the title, and describe what you use precisely in your methods chapter: "the validated version of …", not "the normed version of …", unless it really has norms.

A trustworthy translation follows a method too. The widely cited guidelines of Beaton and colleagues (2000) for cross-cultural adaptation recommend two independent forward translations, a synthesis, back-translation by someone who hasn't seen the original, review by an expert committee and pre-testing. If a validation paper reports none of these, that is not a good sign.

Where to find a trustworthy version: five steps

1. Pin down the exact instrument and author. "Life satisfaction scale" covers several different instruments; "the Satisfaction With Life Scale by Diener and colleagues (1985)" is one. Find the original paper on Google Scholar; the items are often in a table or appendix.
2. Search for the validation in your language. Google Scholar and PubMed with queries like "psychometric properties of the [language] version of …" or "validation of the … scale". For Persian versions, the Iranian databases SID, Magiran, Noormags and Civilica index most validation papers.
3. Appraise the validation paper. Sample size and type (students? patients? employees? similar to your population?), translation method, factor analysis, alpha per subscale, and whether the item count matches the original or some items were dropped.
4. Take the item wording from the paper or its authors, not from a file seller. If the items aren't printed, email the corresponding author; most reply.
5. Check the licensing status (next section).

Permission to use: what you actually need to know

This is not legal advice, but recognise three common situations:

• Free. The developers have granted permission to use, translate and reproduce in advance. Well-known examples are the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, whose developers state that no permission is required. Citation is still required.
• Free for research, on request. Some developers just want an email or a registration so they know where their instrument is used.
• Commercial. Some instruments have a commercial publisher and every copy or administration is paid for, for example the Beck Depression Inventory (second edition) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. For these, online administration sometimes needs a separate licence.

If the status is unclear, send the developer a short email: who you are (degree and university), your thesis topic, which validated version you are using, and that administration will be online; then ask for permission. Put the reply in your appendix; examiners notice.

Eight red flags of a suspicious "standard" file

1. No author or year, or the source is "the internet" or an unnamed master's thesis.
2. The item count doesn't match the original, e.g. a "PHQ-9" with 12 questions.
3. The response scale has been changed. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale uses four points; a five-point version with a "neutral" option is no longer the same instrument, and its scores and cut-offs aren't comparable.
4. No reverse-scoring instructions, although the original has negatively worded items (Rosenberg has five).
5. "Validity and reliability confirmed" with no numbers or source, or one round, unsourced alpha for every dimension.
6. Subscale names don't match the original paper, or items have moved between dimensions.
7. "Standard" for a very narrow topic ("standard questionnaire of satisfaction with the services of agency X") with no developer at all. These are almost always researcher-made.
8. A citation to a thesis you cannot find. Look the title up in the national thesis database.

A file with one of these flags isn't necessarily worthless; you just can no longer call it a "standard questionnaire" in your methods chapter. Either trace its legitimate source or treat it as researcher-made.

Eight common instruments and how they are scored

These are among the most used instruments in psychology, education, nursing and management theses. Use the table to check the file you have: if it doesn't match these specs, it is probably a modified version.

Instrument	Construct	Items	Scale	Score range	Scoring note
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965)	Self-esteem	10	4-point	10–40 (coded 1–4)	Five negatively worded items are reversed (in the common ordering: 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9)
PHQ-9 (Kroenke et al., 2001)	Depressive symptom severity	9	0–3	0–27	Cut-offs 5, 10, 15 and 20: mild, moderate, moderately severe, severe
GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006)	Generalised anxiety	7	0–3	0–21	Cut-offs 5, 10 and 15: mild, moderate, severe
Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985)	Life satisfaction	5	7-point	5–35	20 is the neutral point
WHO-5 Well-Being Index	Mental well-being	5	0–5	Raw 0–25; × 4 = 0–100	A raw score below 13 indicates poor well-being
Perceived Stress Scale, PSS-10 (Cohen)	Perceived stress	10	0–4	0–40	Items 4, 5, 7 and 8 are reversed
System Usability Scale, SUS (Brooke, 1996)	Usability of software or a website	10	1–5	0–100	Odd items: score − 1; even items: 5 − score; sum × 2.5
Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, K10 (Kessler et al., 2002)	Psychological distress	10	1–5	10–50	Higher means more distress

The PHQ-9, GAD-7 and K10 are screening tools, not diagnoses; if your study may surface high scores, put information about where to get help on the questionnaire's final page. We have set up common instruments like these, with automatic scoring, in our standard questionnaire library: items, scale and reverse-scored items are preconfigured and each respondent's score is calculated automatically.

If you can't find a validated version

• Another instrument for the same construct. There are often several validated instruments for one construct; pick the one with a validated version in your language.
• Translate and validate it as part of your own work. The translation steps above, then content validity (CVR and CVI), a pilot and alpha, and, if your sample allows, confirmatory factor analysis. Each step is worked through with numbers in questionnaire validity and reliability.
• A researcher-made instrument, when your construct genuinely has no ready-made measure; the process is in the questionnaire design guide.

Checklist before you use it

• I have the developer's name, the year and the original paper, and I've read it.
• I have the validation paper for my language, and its sample is close to my population.
• My version's item count, scale and reverse-scored items match that paper.
• I have the scoring instructions (and cut-offs, if any) from the source, not from a seller.
• The licensing status is clear, and if I asked for permission, the reply is in my appendix.
• I will recompute reliability in my own sample.

Frequently asked questions

Can I drop a few items from a standard questionnaire?

When you drop items you have built a different instrument, and the reported validity and reliability no longer belong to you. If a validated short form exists (the DASS-21 is the short form of the DASS-42, for example), use that.

Can I change a four-point scale to five points so it matches the rest of my questionnaire?

No. Run each instrument on its own scale; a uniform look matters less than a valid instrument. In an online questionnaire every section can have its own scale.

The validation paper is fifteen years old. Can I still cite it?

Yes, if there is no other valid version. But compute and report alpha in your own sample, and prefer a newer validation if one exists.

Can a standard questionnaire be administered online?

Methodologically, yes; for most self-report instruments online and paper administration are equivalent, provided the wording, order and scale stay the same. For licensing, free instruments are fine; for commercial ones, check the licence terms. Practical tips are in running your thesis questionnaire online.

Standard or researcher-made: which is better?

If a suitable standard instrument with a validated version exists, almost always standard: others have done the validation work, and your results are comparable with other studies. Researcher-made is for constructs with no ready-made measure.

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Found your instrument? Start from the ready-made standard questionnaires or build it in Porsino's online questionnaire builder; dimension scores, per-item reports and an SPSS export with labels are ready.