The way in which you ask your questions is crucial to the success of your survey. That’s why we’re giving you five basic tips to make sure your next online survey becomes a big success.
1. Ask mostly closed questions
Open questions that require freely formulated answers increase the effort for the respondent. This can often lead to not fully completed surveys or in the worst case the respondent stops the whole survey. Furthermore, open questions cannot be evaluated automatically and generate an increased amount of time in the post-processing of the survey.
2. Formulate neutral questions
Do not mislead respondents into making an answer that does not match their true opinion or attitude. This falsifies the result of your survey and reduces the quality of the collected data. This often happens when you ask a suggestive question or include your own opinion.
3. Do not ask for several things in one question
Do not confuse the participants in your survey. An often occurring mistake are double questions in which two (often different) topics or things should be evaluated. This results in incomplete answers since the respondent only addresses one topic or even skips the whole question. Please note, therefore, that only one specific topic should be dealt with per question.
4. Use different questions
Avoid asking the same questions again and again, participants may feel annoyed. This results in worse answers or respondents stop the survey completely. Ensure that there is plenty of variety in your survey: Vary with the type of question, the phrases or the answer options.
5. For most questions, leave the answer optional
Think carefully about which questions need to be answered. There are always questions that participants cannot answer or do not want to answer for different reasons. So prefer to leave the answer optional if you are unsure. Enforced responses cause poor results and more stops of the survey.
When creating your survey, you should always make sure that you do not ask too many questions. Focus on the basics.
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