Creating a Questionnaire: Choosing Questions and Options for Answers

In this article, we will teach you how to create an orderly questionnaire that you can answer without haste. It is important to understand that during a survey on the Internet, the respondent at any time can move away from the computer. Most often this happens for an incidental reason. Go back and quickly remember what he just did, it will be quite difficult. How in this situation to achieve the greatest effectiveness of the survey?

What factors determine the time of the answer to the questionnaire?

First of all, on the number of questions. Then, on the quality of the questions. And finally, on the types of questions.

Now consider in detail each factor.

Volume of the questionnaire

The number of questions in the questionnaire depends on the amount of information that we need to get about the respondent. For an online survey, the optimal number of five to ten questions. At the same time, too many answers to one question often reduces the quality of answers and distorts the information received. The optimal number of options for answering one question is two to five.

How to reduce the number of questions? It is best not to offer possible answers, similar to each other, you need a strong contrast. For example, "yes", "no", "rather no", "more likely yes", "I doubt".

Quality of the questionnaire

Try to ensure that questions and answers are formulated unequivocally, do not allow variants of interpretation. Avoid long, indistinct text-books that take away the respondent's time. For example, "Your favorite cigarettes" instead of "Which particular tobacco products do you prefer to buy at this time of year."

How to raise the quality of the questionnaire? When creating a questionnaire Formulate questions and answers as simply as possible. Do not use incomprehensible terms and abbreviations, which can embarrass the respondent. Remember that the person who answers your questions may very different from you.

Choosing the right types of questions

An unsuccessful choice of question type can significantly increase the time required for a response. For example, how can one ask about the level of education of the respondent.

The best question is multiple choice.

Choose the current level of your education:

• Primary
• average
• Secondary technical
• incomplete higher education
• Higher education
• PhD
• Ph.D

Or the answer variant "other", which should be typed in the text field.

The first option is not only more convenient, but it will take much less time. The second takes away from the respondent will take about twelve seconds of time, and this is five times the first. If the respondent answers using a mobile device, the set of letters will take even more time.

Conclusion

There are a number of factors that affect the time of filling out the questionnaire. It should be remembered that you can not include too many questions in your questionnaire, the type of question should match the information you need to get, and the questions should be simple in form so that the respondent responds quickly.

Moreover, the sequence of questions in the creation of the questionnaire also plays a huge role. First, groups of questions on similar topics should be grouped so that the respondent spends minimum time to move from one question to another. Secondly, you need to put questions from simple to complex, and not vice versa. Finally, the floor-age-education block is usually placed at the end of the questionnaire.