Qualtrics Blog

Purpose of Employee Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral interviews are designed to predict behavior or to explain the reasons for past behavior. A classic example of behavioral interviews is where an employee made a poor decision and then made a worse decision by lying or failing to report the mistake and repercussions of the initial decision.

During behavioral interviews, questions are presented about how the employee acted or reacted in a specific job-related situation. In many situations, employees do not recognize the source of the behavioral problem and how decisions could or should have been made differently.
Behavioral interviews can be instructive, diagnostic, and insightful for both the interviewer, manager, and the employee.
Employee Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral interview questions may be asked in personal interview, phone, or questionnaire form and focus on specific decisions or challenges that were faced. Employee Behavioral Interview questions that are general in nature may be used in employee job interview questionnaires. These questions would provide insights about behavior in future employment situations. In general behavioral situations, we might include questions like:

• Describe a time that you were challenged or put under pressure.
• Tell me about a time when you took it upon yourself to accomplish a task on the job, without being asked.
• Which accomplishment on the job gave you more satisfaction than any other?
• How would you handle it if a coworker (or subordinate) was not pulling his or her fair share of the load?
• What was a major obstacle you have overcome?
• Depending on the initial questions and answers, secondary behavioral interview questions might include:
• How did you deal with it?
• How did you go about achieving it?
• What was the outcome?
• What were you thinking at the time?
• How did it make you feel?
• What did you say or do?
• What are some examples?
• How did you know there was a problem?

Employee behavioral interview questions of a specific nature would focus on understanding past behavior. In specific behavioral situations, we might include questions like:

• Describe the situation in which the challenge took place.
• Describe your assessment of the situation and challenge.
• What were the risks involved?
• What alternative courses of action could have been taken?
• How did you deal with it?
• What did you say or do?
• How did you go about achieving it?
• What was the outcome?
• What were you thinking at the time?
• How did it make you feel?
• What are some examples?
• How did you know there was a problem?
• What could have been done better?

We hope these suggestions can get your mind turning. Maybe conducting behavioral interview surveys is the answer for you!

Qualtrics has a couple of simple, little-known shortcuts that can be helpful when working with the Survey Flow in Qualtrics, especially when needing to copy branching or something similar.

When an item in the Survey Flow is selected (outlined blue), you can then Ctrl+click (or Shift+click) on any of the "Add a New Element Here" buttons and it will create an exact copy in that location of what was selected. This is very useful, powerful tool when needing to replicate a large branch of elements or logic where minor edits might be needed to then complete the setup.

Smaller, but still quite useful shortcuts are the up/down arrows on your keyboard. When an element in the flow is selected, if you press up or down on your keyboard, the item will move one space up or down. This means it will enter and exit branches and randomizers as well.

Sampling is the process of selecting a subset of units from the population. After choosing a sampling method, the next step is to decide how many people should be sampled.

We use sampling formulas to determine how many to select. It is important to select the right amount of people because it is based on the characteristics of this sample that we make inferences about the population.

The most common method of sample size determination is based on proportions. For example, suppose we are preparing for the winter Olympics and are interested in estimating "the proportion of out of state skiers that took at least one overnight trip." We might use this number of people that would consider traveling to the Olympics.

In this case, the sample size is estimated using proportions. sp = (p/(1-p)/ n) where p is the proportion of "out of state skiers that took at least one overnight trip". The most conservative number for this proportion is .50 and if the desired accuracy was .05 and the formula would appear as: (Number of Standard Errors)^{2 * ((proportion)*(1-proportion)) / (Accuracy)}

Using this formula explained above, the following sample sizes will result. If you are curious how your sample size will match up, take a look at this table.

Remember to carefully select your sample size to ensure a representative study.

You can see that as the sample size increases, the percentage of error decreases. Hope this  explanation will help you choose the best sample for your research.

As  you read through these posts, it may be helpful for you to speak to a Qualtrics representative. We offer exceptional customer support, complete with Qualtrics training.

Free access to the Qualtrics Training Team comes with every Qualtrics license. Qualtrics trainings are personalized webinars that can address anything from getting started in Qualtrics to advanced panel management. These trainings are offered at any time to any client:

Basic Training- Learn everything you need to know to get started and write a basic survey. In 1 hour you will learn everything from creating a survey to graphing the results.
Advanced Training- This training typically lasts 1 hour and covers advanced features within the Qualtrics tool. Advanced survey management, creation and analysis are specifically taught in this training.
Administration Training- This 30 minute training introduces brand administrators to the options that they have. This training is a must for new brand administrators that want to succeed.
Customized Training- Find out anything else you want to know about Qualtrics. Our training team is ready to help you learn anything you want to know about the Qualtrics Research Suite.

Email training@qualtrics.com  to schedule your personal training.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every time your survey was completed, or maybe every time a respondent answered a question in a specific way, you could get an email notification? For example, every time someone responded with a suggestion to your feedback link on your website, you would get an email telling you about their suggestion. In Qualtrics it is easy to set this up using email triggers.

To set up an email trigger, go to Advanced Options dropdown menu in the Edit Survey Tab, and select “Email Triggers.” Here you can specify which email you want the messages to be sent to, the subject of the messages, what text you want in the body of the email, and you can even set up filtering conditions. The filtering conditions will set up the trigger to only send when a condition you set is met. To set up a condition, click on “Add a Condition.” Here you can specify if you want your condition to be based off of a question in your survey, embedded data, or even a quota. Just choose one of these options, and specify the condition in the corresponding drop down boxes. You can even click on the plus sign to the right to add “and if” or “or if” criteria to your condition. To set up multiple triggers, you can click on “Add Another Trigger” at the bottom of the window, and follow the same process.  Email triggers are a great and easy way to receive automatic notifications from your survey.

You’ve done it!  Your feedback survey is created, there is a prominent link on your website, and now you are collecting data.  What next?  Why not use these results to automatically create a panel for future mailings?  There are two easy ways to do this in Qualtrics:

1.       Setting it up ahead of time: In the Advanced Options menu on the Edit Survey Page, you will see the Panel Triggers feature.  Simply select a panel, and select which answer represents their first name, last name, and email address.  Each time a respondent answers the questions and meets the conditions you specify, the will be added to the panel.

2.       Setting it up after the fact: Forgot to set up a panel trigger before distributing the survey?  You can still automatically add panel members.  In your Panel Members screen on the Panels page, select “Import/Update panel members” and follow the prompts.

Time to pat yourself on the back - with one simple step you’ve just built a large client database that you can call upon for later market research.  Happy Qualtrics-ing!

Thanks for coming to our final post in our series about writing great survey questions. We hope that we have offered some valuable help that will get you past some common roadblocks when you design your surveys.

Here are a few more things to consider:

Two-part questions. Make sure answers are independent. For example, "Do you think of basketball players as independent agents or as employees of their team?" Some believe that yes, they are both. In order to get the responses you are looking for, avoid asking dichotomous questions.

Long questions. Multiple choice questions are the longest and most complex. Free text answers are the shortest and easiest to answer. When you increase the length of questions and surveys, you decrease the chance of receiving a completed response. Be creative in your questions so that respondents don’t get tired with your survey.

Questions on future intentions. Yogi Berra (famous New York Yankees baseball player) once said that making predictions is difficult, especially when they are about the future. Predictions are rarely accurate more than a few weeks or in some case months ahead. Avoid asking questions like, “Do you anticipate watching TV in the next 24 hours?” This will create some uneasiness in your respondents, because they are trying to decipher their future intentions.

The rank order question provides more powerful data than a simple multiple choice question for selecting nominal or categorical items. Ordinal scales apply order to the data. Unlike rank order data, most multiple choice scales do not permit us to say that one item is greater than another.

The rank order question provides direction and relative position, but not absolute difference. That is, rank order data indicates order, but does not tell us how much one item is preferred over another. The rank order question is a powerful tool because respondents often misuse traditional rating scales, indicating ties and evaluating all choices within a narrow 1 or 2 point range.

Rank order data uses an answer format that requires the respondent to assign a rank position for the first, second… up to the nth item to be ordered. This format of assigning position numbers is very versatile. Respondents may be asked to rank a specified subset from the list (such as their first, second, and third choices from a list), or to rank all items in the list.

Typical questions might include identifying preference rankings, attribute association strength, first to last, oldest to youngest, or relative position (most, next most, and so forth, until either a set number of items is ordered or all items may be ordered).

There are several ways to format the rank order question type within Qualtrics.  The most interactive way is to use the Drag and Drop option.  This option allows respondents to drag and drop the answer choices into their preferred order.  It is a way to make your survey a little more interesting for respondents while still collecting the data that you need.

The purpose of designing surveys with Qualtrics is often to analyze the results. With the tool, there are many options for your results.

First, it is good to be aware of our public report feature. This is found by clicking on the “View Results” tab, and then on the “View Reports” icon.  By electing to turn the report on, you generate a link which you can distribute to others in order to present the results of your survey.  This link is updated in live time; new responses are included here as they are collected. You can also decide to install a password on the public report if you would like to.  Keep in mind that this report presents the total results of your survey.

We provide several opportunities to edit the content of your report.   Note that any graphs or tables which you add will be implemented in your public report.  You can also add a note to your report to explain a feature of your report.  For example, you can add descriptions under a graph for a colleague so when he or she views the report, the background or detailed findings would be clearer. To add descriptions or notes, select the “More” drop-down menu and then “Add Note.”  Another way to edit the content is to control what is shared in the public report. Perhaps there are certain elements of your survey that are private or compromising and shouldn’t be shared with others.  You can hide certain questions from your survey in the report by deselecting the question on the toolbar to the left of the page.  Any filters that you install on your report will also affect the public report.

Just when you think you got the hang of surveys, you sometimes find a hang-up. To avoid problems with surveys, check out three simple suggestions to help you write great questions.

Non-exhaustive listings

When you are writing multiple choice questions, sometimes it’s difficult to think of every option.

For example, if you are asking “What kind of car do you drive?” and can only think of Honda, Toyota and Ford, you might need some help thinking of other answer choices.

It is good to ask yourself: Do I have all of the options covered? If you are unsure, conduct a pretest using the "Other (please specify) __________" option.

As you read through what test respondents wrote under “other” you can go back and edit your survey before making it live to your target respondents. For example, you might have found that a lot of people wrote BMW and Jeep, you could consider putting those as options in your multiple choice question. Revising the question can help you make sure that you cover at least 90% of the respondent answers.

Unbalanced listings

Unbalanced scales may be appropriate for some situations and biased in others. When measuring alcohol consumption patterns, one study used a quantity scale that made the heavy drinker appear in the middle of the scale with the polar ends reflecting no consumption and an impossible amount to consume. A better option would be to keep all of the scale points fairly even. So instead, ask if the level of alcohol consumption is no consumption, moderate consumption, or heavy consumption.

This suggestion is displayed below:


Double barreled questions

Two questions should not be asked in the same question. For example, "What is the fastest and most economic Internet service for you?" The fastest is certainly not the most economical. Be careful to read your questions to ensure you are only asking one question at a time.