Survey Question Dos and Don’ts
Learn the dos and don’ts of survey questions with practical examples. Write clear, concise, unbiased questions and avoid leading, loaded, and double-barreled wording.
Good survey questions are clear, concise, neutral, and easy to answer. Do ask one thing at a time, use a meaningful timeframe, and give respondents balanced answer choices. Don’t use leading or loaded language, combine two topics in one question, or leave people guessing what you mean.
Survey question dos and don’ts checklist
- Do match your language to the people you want to hear from.
- Do use familiar words and keep each question clear and concise.
- Do ask about one subject at a time.
- Do provide a specific timeframe when it changes the meaning of the answer.
- Do offer balanced questions and response options.
- Don’t lead respondents toward the answer you prefer.
- Don’t use emotional or loaded language.
- Don’t put difficult or sensitive questions at the beginning without a reason.
Write for your target participants
When you have decided what to ask, it’s time to determine how to ask it. Your survey participants might belong to different demographic groups. Your target group might be specified in regards to age, level of education, or profession. Therefore, you have to use language that is clear and understandable for your audience.
In other words, you should speak their language. You should consider what they already know, and use terminology that is understandable to them. Always try to write your questions in a way that is coherent and easy to grasp.
Write clear and concise survey questions
In a way, it doesn’t really matter who is going to participate in your survey. You have to be clear with what you ask and avoid long and complicated questions anyway. Use words with clear meanings. If you have to use any less familiar expressions, jargon, terms, or acronyms, make sure you provide descriptions for them.
If your participant has to read a question two times to understand it, this means you have already lost them. A good exercise is to practice writing questions that you could see yourself asking friends or colleagues.
Example:
| What was the state of your room when you arrived at our hotel in terms of cleanliness and tidiness? | |
| How clean was your room when you arrived? |
| Do you use any medicines several times per week or per month? | |
| Do you regularly use medicines? |
Use a respectful, neutral tone
Sometimes people are frightened to respond to surveys. If respondents feel they are not qualified or good enough to answer a question, or if they feel sharing their true opinions might sound stupid to the creator of the survey, they just might leave your survey.
If you really want participants to share their true opinions with you without feeling intimidated, due to their level of knowledge, beliefs, or profession, then you have to make them feel comfortable by using the right tone in your survey questions.
So, when you ask questions, use phrases such as “do you think …”, “do you feel …”, “according to you …” or “in your opinion”. In this way, respondents to your survey will not think they are participating in a quiz, and they will not fear their answers will be seen as right or wrong.
Example:
| Which types of services should our company offer, to be considered a good company? | |
| In your opinion, which types of services should our company offer, to be considered a good company? |
| Is there any problem with the choice of colors in our product? | |
| Do you feel there is any problem with the choice of colors in our product? |
Example:
| Do you think that the administration of your department needs to be changed? | |
| Talking about reforms in the company, we have found out some of your colleagues think that the administration of your department needs a change. What about you? Do you share this opinion? |
Give survey questions a clear timeframe
In many cases, the answer you are looking for is meaningful when put into a timeframe.
For example, you want to see whether or not your advertising campaigns have successfully reached local people in the past month. So, you make a survey and ask your participants: “Do you follow the local media?”
Well, this might be really hard for them to answer, or the answers might be very misleading for you. Maybe a respondent does usually follow the media, but for the past month they have been on a trip or for some reason could not follow the media, therefore missed your advertising campaign. So, if they answer “yes”, you might be upset with your campaign because you may think it has not reached them or has not been interesting enough.
So as you see, asking the right questions will be something like this:
“Have you followed the local media in the past month?”
More examples:
| Do you visit any health care professionals? | |
| In the past year, have you visited any health care professionals? |
| How much time do you spend watching TV? | |
| In a typical day, about how much time do you spend watching TV? |
If you do not have a clear or specific time period in mind, it can be a good idea to begin your questions with phrases or words such as “In general”, “Overall”, “Typically”, or “Usually”. This makes the participants answer based on their average behaviour or usual habits.
However, such questions are always harder to answer and it is more difficult for participants to evaluate something in vague timeframes.
If possible, you can place the timeframe in the beginning of your survey questions, to put more emphasis on it.
Write unbiased survey questions
An unbiased survey question does not push respondents toward a preferred answer. It uses neutral wording, asks one thing at a time, presents plausible answer options fairly, and gives people enough context to answer accurately.
Well, the whole point with doing a survey is getting the real opinions of your target group, not getting a result that you “like” or “prefer” to get. It’s all about being real and dealing with reality.
Here are five common mistakes that might cause poor survey results.
1. Avoid leading questions
If you create biased questions in your survey, this can cause your audience to provide you with answers that might not be real. You should avoid leading them to an answer that you may prefer to hear.
Example:
| Has our amazing new product made your life easier? | |
| How do you feel about our new product? |
2. Avoid loaded language
You usually have some personal opinions or preconceptions about the subject for which you have created the survey. But beware of allowing your own ideas to leak into your survey questions. Such mistakes can influence the participants and their responses.
When you ask questions with loaded language, you are putting emotions or connotations into the questions that may affect participants as well.
Example:
| In the past week, how much time did you waste checking your Facebook? | |
| In the past week, how much time did you spend checking your Facebook? |
3. Avoid double-barreled questions
Ask about one thing at a time. Try to make a distinct question for each subject that you need information about. Avoid asking questions that contain more than one subject. For example:
“Do you play computer games and watch TV a lot in your free time.”
How would the participant answer if they only watch TV and don’t play any games, or vice versa? What is the answer to this question really? Yes? No? Kind of?
Example:
| Do you exercise a lot and eat healthy food? | |
|
– In the past two months, how much time was spent on exercise? – In the past two months, about how many days did you eat healthy food? |
4. Use balanced questions and answer choices
Give readers a possibility to express their opinions more freely, by putting opposing answers into the questions. In this way, the questions will have more balance.
Example:
| Do you like mathematics? | |
|
– Do you like mathematics or not? – Do you like mathematics, or do you not like mathematics? |
An unbalanced question is one that has a question stem that does not provide the reader with all reasonably plausible sides of an issue.
The problem of balance in a survey question also can apply to the response alternatives that are presented to respondents.
Unbalanced questions generally are closed-ended questions, but it is possible to use open-ended questions in which the question stem is unbalanced.
However, an unbalanced question may not always lead to biased data, but that is the concern in most instances.
5. Avoid overly broad survey questions
Avoid asking questions that expect respondents to write an article as an answer. For instance, if you ask a broad and very general question such as: “How do you feel about our product?” and then give them a comment box to fill in, what do you expect as an answer?
A product can be criticized or praised from many different angles. You should be much more specific and narrow down the topic; then write one question per topic.
Example:
| What do you think about our product? | |
|
– Do you like the tactile quality of our product or not – Do you like the color that we use in our product or not? – How easy is it to handle our product? – Etc… |
How to fix a bad survey question
First, identify what is influencing or confusing the answer. Then rewrite the question so it measures one clear idea.
- Leading question: remove praise, criticism, or an assumed outcome.
- Loaded question: replace emotional words with neutral language.
- Double-barreled question: split the two subjects into separate questions.
- Unbalanced question: show the plausible sides of the issue fairly.
- Overly broad question: narrow it to one product feature, event, or experience.
Put survey questions in the right order
When ordering your survey questions, you should try to put them in a logical order, and group questions for similar topics together. A good idea is to use section breaks, or page breaks (both available in SurveyLegend fields) between groups of questions, based on your surveying strategy. Also, it’s better to put a brief overview of your survey structure in the beginning of your survey.
Put easy questions first
If possible, easier questions should come earlier in the survey. This will create a pleasant start for your respondents, and it will be more likely that they continue answering your whole survey. It’s always good to give this impression that the survey they are going to participate in is not that hard. In oral surveys, this also helps the interviewer build a good relationship and trust with the respondent.
Put difficult or sensitive questions last
Conversely, put the more difficult questions near the end of the survey. If your respondents face a difficult question right at the beginning, they might assume that all the questions are going to be that difficult. Therefore, taking the survey starts to look like a real hassle, right from the beginning.
But if they see the hard or sensitive questions at the end, they may put in the effort to finish the survey, because they have already done most of the work, and know that there are not many questions left. Note that SurveyLegend shows a nice progress bar in each survey, which lets the participants know how much more of the survey is left.
Plus, even if participants leave the survey or skip the hard questions, at least you will have most or at least half of the survey to analyze, instead of none.
Survey question dos and don’ts FAQs
What are the dos and don’ts of survey questions?
Do write clear, concise, neutral questions that ask one thing at a time, use a meaningful timeframe, and provide balanced answer choices. Don’t use leading or loaded language, combine two topics in one question, or make respondents guess what you mean.
What is an unbiased survey question?
An unbiased survey question does not push respondents toward a preferred answer. It uses neutral wording, asks one thing at a time, presents plausible answer options fairly, and gives enough context to answer accurately.
What is an example of a biased survey question?
“Has our amazing new product made your life easier?” is biased because “amazing” praises the product and assumes it may have improved the respondent’s life. A more neutral version is: “How would you describe your experience with our new product?”
How do you fix a double-barreled survey question?
Split it into two questions. Instead of asking, “Do you exercise often and eat healthy food?”, ask separately about exercise frequency and eating habits so each answer measures only one subject.
How do you make survey questions clear and concise?
Use familiar words, remove unnecessary detail, define essential jargon, ask one specific thing, and read the question aloud. If you need to read it twice to understand it, simplify it before publishing the survey.