How To Conduct An Online Survey and Engage Customers In A Dialogue

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How To Conduct An Online Survey and Engage Customers In A Dialogue

By Tim Slavin
2006-08-08

Write Your Questions

How to write survey questions can be more complicated than you might
think, but not impossible to work through. You will need to consider at
least three issues:

Types of questions
Wording of questions
Order of questions

Questions, for example, can be open ended or closed. You either ask
your customers to write a response (open ended) or select from a
defined set of possible answers (closed). Ideally, most of your
questions should be closed because the survey will go more quickly with
less chance that a customer will become tied down answering one
question then abandon your survey. Closed questions also yield more
uniform responses when you measure your results.

There are also at least these types of questions to consider when you write your questions:

Multiple choice questions offer a limited range of possible answers, either one or multiple responses per question.
Matrix questions that allow the customer to rate a range of products or services by a single set of possible responses.
Open ended questions that allow the customer to type in their response.

These three types of questions have numerous permutations.
SurveyMonkey, for example, offers a dozen different question types
based on these three basic types. For example, you can have a multiple
choice question that lets the customer choose from a dropdown list, a
vertical (up/down) list of choices, or horizontal (left/right) choices.
This may seem cosmetic but dropdown lists might retard participation
because the customer may not see the question. And a horizontal list of
choices might make your survey appear shorter than if the same choices
are laid out vertically across the page and under the question.

How you word survey questions is another important aspect to writing
survey questions. While common sense rules apply (short sentences with
familiar words are better than convoluted sentences with unusual
words), here are some guidelines to follow as you write survey
questions:

Avoid double negatives, abbreviations, acronyms, and relax your grammar as needed.
Avoid leading questions, be neutral in how you phrase your questions.
Look for questions that should be broken into two or more parts. If
you have the conjunction "and" in a question, chances are you can break
the question into two or more questions. Long questions are another
candidate for breaking into smaller, more pointed questions.
Use consistent rating scales, for example, use 1-5 for bad to good
on all questions with rating scales instead of 1-4 for one question,
1-10 for another question, and 1-6 for a third question.
When a question begins with or uses "if," consider rewriting to
avoid branching (having customers skip down some number of questions to
get to the next relevant question). If branching cannot be avoided, be
sure to use text (headlines, questions, and descriptions) to clearly
lead your customer to the next point in the survey.
Where possible, provide multiple choice responses instead of asking
customers to distribute their ratings across multiple categories.
Asking "which of these choices best describe your response" is more
efficient and less frightening to deal with than "tell us which of
these choices is most important to you in terms of percentages (must
equal 100%)."
For multiple choice responses, prune your list to 2-5 choices in
most cases and responses to no more than a half dozen words where
possible.
Look for questions that require recall and rewrite them to minimize
how much your customers have to recall since memories are often
difficult to recall, especially if people are in a hurry while
completing your survey.
Consider use of the third person for challenging and threatening
questions. For example, ask "How do your friends respond to losing this
benefit?" instead of "How do you respond to losing this benefit?" As
with any rule, it depends upon the expected response of your customers
and the overall flow of your survey.
Use consistent phrase structures in your questions and answers to
improve the overall flow and tie together different elements of your
survey. For example, if appropriate, begin all responses with verb
phrases instead of alternating randomly between starting responses (or
questions) with verb, noun, adjective, and adverb phrases.
Your last edit with each question should be to pose and answer two
questions: What will I learn from this question? Will what I learn be
useful to my business?

Here's one example that shows how to edit and polish your questions.
Say you want to know which day of the week works best to deliver
product or services to your customer. You could ask, "Which days work
best for you to receive Product X?" However, this is a leading
question: it presumes your customer wants Product X. It would be better
to break this one question into two questions, at least. Do you want to
receive Product X? and If you want to receive Product X, which days
work best for you? Then you might add a third question, "If you do not
want to receive Product X, please give your reasons" with multiple
choice responses and/or an open ended question they can use to type a
unique answer.

Finally, in writing your survey questions, consider how you order
the questions in your survey. Placing your most difficult questions up
top risks turning off your customers which leads to them abandoning
your survey. Here are some guidelines to follow as you order your
survey questions:

Lead with interesting questions that entice your customers to respond.
Demographic and other easy to comprehend questions are a scarce
resource that can help lead your customer into your survey. They also
can be used to pace the survey if placed between more difficult
questions, as a way to help your customer through your survey.
Use logical order. For example, if questions are related, be sure
they're in an order that makes sense to your customer. Move from the
general to the specific. Be aware if answering one question make a
customer likely to respond differently when they arrive at another
question later in the survey; in that case, the questions probably
should be grouped together and ordered to make best sense.
Look for dead ends and transitions and make sure they're smoothed
over with text (headlines, questions, and descriptions) that bridges
these sections of your survey.

Article Pages:
» How To Conduct An Online Survey - Introduction
» The Survey Process
» Define Your Goals
» Pick Your Tools
» Write Your Questions
» Test Your Survey
» Deploy Your Survey
» Measure Your Results
» Final Thoughts: To Pay or Not To Pay For Participation?

Related Articles:
» User-Friendly Surveys in 5 Simple Steps
» 10 Steps to Creating More Effective Surveys
» Build Better Surveys - Survey Question Types Explained
» Understanding Single Choice Survey Answer Types
» Doing a Corporate Culture Survey
» 14 Tips For Writing An Effective Online Survey