How to Create a Survey That Hits the Research Questions
Survey design is the process of creating, formatting, and styling a survey. If you take the time to write good survey questions, you’ll be well on your way to getting the reliable answers you need to reach your goals. When surveys are designed for an audience, respondents are more likely to fill out the form and provide valuable feedback to your business.
In this article, I will show you how you can create an easy-to-complete survey that encourages feedback that matter to you and provides easy-to-use data during the analysis phase.
The Three Principles When Designing a Survey
When creating a survey, keep the three Cs in mind: clear, concise, and communicative. These are the main factors influencing the design of your survey.
Keep things clear
Are your survey questions easy to understand? Is there a specific answer for each? Will your attendees understand the meaning of each? When questions seem random or out of place, participants lose focus and may not complete their form.
Keeping it Concise
How long will your survey take? Are there fewer than 30 questions? Are your questions well structured and asked only once, not rephrased or asked in multiple ways? Pay close attention to these details, as the length of your survey is one of the most critical factors affecting the completion rate.
Communicative Questions
Are the questions helping you achieve your main goal? Is everyone contributing to generating meaningful insights? Be sure to delete any questions that are irrelevant or that might distract participants.
Tips to Create a Good Survey
1. Create a Specific Goal For Your Survey
Before you can think about the survey questions, you need to define their purpose. The purpose of the research must be clear, achievable and relevant. For example, you want to understand why customer engagement decreases during a sale. Your goal might be, “I want to understand the key factors that lead to low engagement midway through the sales process, both internally and externally.”
The idea is to find specific, measurable and relevant goals for your research. This way you can be sure that your questions align with what you want to achieve and that the recovered data is comparable to your goals.
2. Lean towards closed-ended questions.
A closed question is a question with a predefined answer generated by a survey designer. These questions are typically presented in multiple-choice or checkbox format, and attendees select their preferred option from a series of answers provided. Closed questions are preferred because they lead to quantitative results that are easy to answer and analyze.
Open questions can be used to capture qualitative data, but they take a long time to enter and review, so we recommend that you only include them if you’re looking for specific feedback or if your audience is small. If so, ask the question at the end of the survey. This is because filling it out takes more effort and can be confusing for attendees.
3. Keep it short and simple
An important part of your job as a survey designer is getting their attention and keeping them focused during the survey. Respondents are less likely to complete lengthy surveys or surveys that randomly jump from topic to topic. Make sure your survey follows a logical order and takes a reasonable amount of time.
Additionally, paired questions (questions that require participants to answer two separate poets at the same time) can also affect health. For example, ask “What do you like most about our website and social media?” Participants must respond based on their view of the website or social media. If they don’t know which one to choose, their answer is relatively useless.
4. Avoid Vaguely Worded Questions
Poorly worded survey questions confuse respondents and render the resulting data useless. Be as specific as possible and try to use clear, concise language so that you can easily answer the survey questions.
5. Ease Your Respondents Into Your Survey
Help survey participants by asking simple questions at the beginning of the survey and moving on to more complex or challenging elements as they participate in the process.
This is especially important if your survey is to cover potentially sensitive topics. Do not ask sensitive questions at the beginning of the survey, as you may feel uncomfortable.
After designing your survey, you should test it before sending it to your stakeholders. After all, you must ensure your survey is effective and collects the data you are looking for. Running tests with a small sample size or with internal staff can uncover errors your team may have overlooked. By double-checking your survey, you can ensure you haven’t missed any questions, misspelt words, or distorted words. It is better to find out about these issues now rather than after the survey is distributed. Also, take the opportunity to send us your feedback on the survey design. too long? Bored? Have a confusing or frequent question? Is the question correct?
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