Designing Effective Surveys

Designing Effective Questions and Questionnaires

• Effective survey questions require identifying what information is needed.

• Including all important factors in survey questions is crucial to obtaining usable data.

• Questions should be clear, concise, and to the point.

• Questions should be relevant to all respondents and avoid cultural or regional specificity.

• Filter questions may be used if only a portion of respondents have experience with a topic.

• Double negatives, double-barreled questions, and socially desirable questions should be avoided.

• Feedback from a diverse group of people can help in developing effective survey questions.

• Closed-ended questions with mutually exclusive and exhaustive response options are common in quantitative written surveys.

• Open-ended questions may be used to gather additional details from respondents.

• Double-barreled response options and fence-sitting or floating responses should be avoided.

• Providing unambiguous response options is important for closed-ended questions.

• Multiple responses to a single question may add complexity in tallying and analyzing survey results.Designing Effective Survey Questions and Questionnaires

• Group similar survey questions thematically and be deliberate about how they are presented to respondents.

• Begin the survey with questions that will make respondents want to continue, but also consider the unique characteristics of the topic, questions, and sample when determining the order of questions.

• Consider the length of the questionnaire and the time respondents are willing to spend completing it, pretesting can help estimate the time it will take.

• Demographic questions should be placed strategically, at the beginning or after sensitive questions, depending on the survey.

• Closed-ended questions with clear and concise response options are preferred, but researchers must consider the problem of fence-sitting and floating.

• Researchers can use a matrix question type to streamline response options for a set of questions with similar response categories.

• Pretesting is essential for improving the survey before administering it and can help identify any issues with question wording or order.

• The presentation of the survey questions should be attractive, readable, and clear with reasonable space between items and instructions.

• Brainstorming and consulting the literature are important early steps in preparing to write effective survey questions.

• Survey questions should be relevant to all respondents, and filter questions should be used when necessary.

• The length of the survey depends on the research question and the characteristics of the sample.

• The order of questions and the length of the survey may vary, and there is no clear-cut, always-correct answer.