Steve Tippins explains why dissertation proposals get rejected at Chapter 3: students confuse survey with questionnaire. A survey is your method for collecting data; a questionnaire is the tool you use. Committees need this distinction clear to understand your methodology and approve your work.
One of the places where this happens is when students interchangeably use the words survey and questionnaire. This means the instrument and the method are being blurred or confused. When this happens, your committee can't tell what tool you used, which is the questionnaire, or what method you used, which is the survey, or ultimately how data was collected and analyzed. So even if you've got a fantastic study and you did a great job, if the wording gets confused, your committee can't understand it or can't fully appreciate what you've done. This is a reason why it's really important to be specific and know and explain a survey is a survey and a questionnaire is a questionnaire so that they know you understand the difference. And a lot of questions you get are to help the committee understand what you know. If you help them with that understanding earlier, you move forward faster. Drop the word "help" in the comment below and I'll send you the link to our free dissertation help community.
