Surveys allow you to learn more about your target customers, gathering their opinions and insights into their experiences with your products and services. However, getting high-quality, functional, and representative data can be challenging. To overcome these challenges and ensure your surveys are effective, it’s essential to follow best practices for writing survey questions. In this blog, we’ll discuss these best practices to help you get the best data and make smarter business decisions. Additionally, we’ll explore how InnovateMR’s DIY platform can assist you in implementing these practices, providing an end-to-end solution for agile survey creation, sample procurement, and rapid reporting.
1. Target the Right Audience
Before you build your survey questions, dedicate time to identifying your target audience. Understanding who you’re writing the questions for and why is crucial for obtaining relevant data. Consider the following questions before you begin:
Who is your typical or intended customer?
What are you trying to learn?
What gaps between your existing knowledge base and what you’re trying to discover must your survey address?
By having a clear understanding of your target audience, you can better tailor your questions to get the right results the first time.
2. Keep Questions Clear and Concise
Clear and concise questions prevent confusion and ensure that respondents understand what is being asked. Avoid using complex language or jargon that may not be familiar to all respondents. Each question should be straightforward and easy to understand.
Example:
Instead of: “What are your perceptions regarding our customer service?”
Use: “How would you rate our customer service?”
3. Utilize Open-Ended Questions
Open-ended questions prompt a short-form written answer from your survey participants, allowing for full and personalized responses. These questions provide opportunities to learn about your respondents in detail, giving them the chance to express their thoughts in their own words without restricting them to multiple-choice or scale answers. For the best results, combine open-ended questions with closed-ended options to achieve a balanced blend of qualitative and quantitative data.
Example:
“What do you like most about our product?”
4. Avoid Leading Questions
Leading questions can bias responses by suggesting a particular answer. Ensure your questions are neutral and do not imply that one answer is better than another.
Example:
Instead of: “Don’t you think our new product is amazing?”
Use: “What are your thoughts on our new product?”
5. Incorporate Red Herring Questions
To ensure that your audience is paying attention throughout the survey, consider adding red herring questions. These are attention-testing questions that are unrelated to the survey’s main topic. They help identify participants who may have stopped reading the questions or rushed to complete the survey for a reward.
Example:
“What makeup brand do you use most often?”
Maybelline
Nars
Avon
Purina
Respondents who choose “Purina” (a pet food brand) are likely not reading the questions carefully. Such responses should be omitted when analyzing your results.
6. Provide Balanced Answer Choices
Ensure your answer choices cover all possible responses and are balanced. Avoid having all positive or negative options and include a neutral choice if applicable.
Example:
“How would you rate your experience with our website?”
Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Very poor
7. Avoid Double-Barreled Questions
Double-barreled questions ask about two different things in one question, confusing respondents and leading to unclear answers. Split such questions into two separate ones.
Example:
Instead of: “How satisfied are you with our product quality and customer service?”
Use: “How satisfied are you with our product quality?” and “How satisfied are you with our customer service?”
8. Respect Respondents’ Time
Once you’ve identified your target audience and the type of questions you’ll include in your survey, it’s target to ensure the total length of the survey is appropriate. You don’t want to miss key questions, but you must respect your participants’ time by keeping things as concise as possible and only asking what you really need to know. This ensures respondents will be engaged throughout the entire survey, reducing drop-off rates.
9. Pretest Your Survey
Before distributing your survey widely, pretest it with a small group of people. This helps identify any confusing or ambiguous questions and allows you to make necessary adjustments.
10. Maintain Logical Flow
Organize your questions in a logical order that flows naturally. Group similar topics together and start with general questions before moving to more specific ones. This helps keep respondents engaged and focused.
How to Use These Tips with InnovateMR DIY
By utilizing InnovateMR’s DIY platform, you can seamlessly implement these best practices for writing survey questions. InnovateMR’s DIY platform is designed to be your end-to-end solution with integrated sampling, proprietary audiences, and unlimited surveys and answers. This platform is tailored to execute agile survey creation, sample procurement, field management, fraud mitigation, and rapid reporting, meeting the unique needs of every client. With InnovateMR DIY, you can feel secure in your survey creation process, knowing that you have a comprehensive tool that covers all aspects of survey creation.
Identify and target the right audience using our powerful sampling capabilities, ensuring you gather relevant data from the right people. With InnovateMR DIY, you can create sophisticated surveys with ease. Our platform is designed to be user-friendly, empowering you to create custom questionnaires or use our frequently used question library, select your audience, and watch the data roll in. The survey creation tools enable you to craft clear and concise questions, avoiding leading or double-barreled questions. The self-serve sample feature allows you to define and access your target audience, no matter how niche, putting you in control of your survey creation process.
Incorporate open-ended and closed-ended questions to achieve a balanced mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Use red herring questions to maintain data integrity and ensure respondents are attentive. Our high-quality, proprietary respondents provide fast answers, and you can manage quotas to prevent information overload. Focusing on quality, InnovateMR’s DIY platform utilizes the award-winning Text Analyzer™ and an extensive red herring question library to ensure only high-quality responses. Our system monitors data in real-time, delivering rich and relevant insights that add depth to your research findings.
Finally, the platform’s intuitive design allows you to respect respondents’ time by creating logically flowing surveys that keep them engaged. InnovateMR DIY ensures you get high-quality, actionable insights efficiently and effectively, providing you with rich and relevant insights that add depth to your research findings.
Conclusion
Writing survey questions can be time-consuming and, at times, tedious, but by making sensible, informed decisions, you can produce high-quality data that has the potential to transform your business approach. Follow these tips in your next survey design to capture engaged participants and impactful data for your organization. For more tips and expert guidance on survey design, contact InnovateMR for professional support!
About InnovateMR – InnovateMR is a full-service sampling and ResTech company that delivers faster, quality insights from business and consumer audiences utilizing cutting-edge technologies to support agile research. As industry pioneers, InnovateMR provides world-class end-to-end survey programming, targeted international sampling, qualitative and quantitative insights, and customized consultation services to support informed, data-driven strategies, and identify growth opportunities. Known for their celebrated status in customer service and results, InnovateMR combines boutique-level service with extensive global reach to achieve partner success.
