Writing Great Survey Questions: Week 5

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.