User's Manual

Smart Survey Design
Page 5
clear, direct, and brief questions will help the survey respondents to know exactly what you
are asking. By making sure that the questions asked do not have more than one possible
meaning also helps in preventing respondents‟ confusion. Asking sensitive questions in
alternate ways may help to alleviate respondents‟ concerns. For example, many people
may feel that income, age, lifestyle habits, etc. are personal and may not want to disclose
that information. So when collecting a respondent‟s age, a person may be more willing to
indicate what year s/he was born rather than to state an actual age. Finally, take into
consideration the capability of your survey participants. Some participants may not be able
to accurately answer certain questions. If you are surveying employees, perhaps they
cannot recall certain details of a project carried out years ago. Or if you are surveying a
consumer product, respondents may not remember specific features about it (“Survey
Planning”).
A. Question Intent:
Well-understood questions increase both the accuracy and frequency of survey
respondents‟ answers. While creating survey questions, keep these two fundamental
questions in mind in regards to the intent behind the questions and the data you want to
collect (Iarossi 2006, 44):
 Will respondents be able to understand the question?
 Will respondents be able to answer the question?
The legibility and relevancy of these questions will therefore play a key role on
impacting each individual question‟s intent. By sticking to these three following
suggestions, you may increase the accuracy and frequency of respondents‟ answers:
1. Use legible questions – Ask questions that read well and are quick and easy to
answer. This may help to keep the respondents from jumping to an answer before
the question is completely read. Avoid writing questions in a complex structure;
sometimes the longer the list of questions/answers, the lower the quality of the data
(Iarossi 2006, 44).
2. Use relevant questions – Make sure that all questions asked are relevant to all
respondents and the survey‟s purpose. In addition, avoid hypothetical questions
(Iarossi 2006, 44).
3. Use painless questions – Questions asked in your survey should require a small
amount of effort to answer. Most people prefer to answer and complete surveys
quickly without thinking too hard or spend a lot of time. If the survey is too long or
becomes tiresome, respondents may adopt strategies to get to the end of the survey
as quickly as possible. For example, with repeated rating scale type questions,