The online questionnaire as a data production device in health research

Abstract

This article aims to present and discuss an experience of applying an online questionnaire (QOL) as a data production device in the universe of health research. This is a survey carried out in a partnership between the Faculty of Medicine of USP and the Research and Training Center of Sesc São Paulo, which proposed to develop a new concept of an online questionnaire, aimed at capturing the life experience of respondents during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the theoretical-methodological framework of intervention research, the results of this experience point to the proposition of an in-depth questionnaire, based on the use of different communication techniques and the active incorporation in its form and content of at least 4 dimensions that are inseparable from the production of knowledge in health: (1) its ethical-investigative dimension, (2) the clinical dimension, (3) the aesthetic-communicational dimension and (4) its political dimension. It is concluded that, with the growing process of virtualization of life – which is also expressed in investigative processes in health – the reinvention of online data production techniques can be presented as a strategy for the creation of innovative processes in academic production, which allow for an extensive and plural increase in samples, without losing depth in the production of knowledge and care.