Dave Vannette
Author Bio
Dave Vannette is a contributor to the Qualtrics blog.
Articles written by Dave Vannette
Rating or Ranking: Choosing the best question type for your data
When it comes to surveys, how you ask each question may be just as important to your data quality as what you ask. It can be tricky to decide what type of question to use to get the most useful dat...
3 min read
How to Ask Sensitive Survey Questions
Imagine you are responding to an online survey and you’re asked about a sensitive topic, such as drug use, sexual behavior, racial attitudes, or your income. You might be reluctant to tell the truth...
6 min read
Three Tips for Effectively Designing Rating Scales
Survey data are only as good as the questions asked and the way we ask them. To that end, let’s talk survey rating scales such as Likert scales. Some of the common questions researchers when setting...
5 min read
How to Label Response Scale Points in Your Survey to Avoid Misdirecting Respondents
Have you ever been following navigation instructions while driving and wished that an instruction or street sign would’ve been more clear or specific? Maybe you couldn’t tell in time which lane le...
2 min read
6 Ways to Pretest Your Survey Before You Send It
Time is money, and often researchers want to send their surveys to respondents as quickly as possible, many times untested. But rushing to distribute a survey can often result in unforeseen problems w...
4 min read
Survey Straightlining: What is it? How can it hurt you? And how to protect against it.
Straightlining. It’s the bane of survey writers. It happens when your respondents rush through your survey clicking on the same response every time and it’s a serious threat to data quality. &n...
3 min read
Using Attention Checks in Your Surveys May Harm Data Quality
Thinking of checking up on respondent attention mid-survey to make sure that you’re getting good data? Think again. In this article, we highlight how new findings from our Qualtrics Methodology L...
9 min read
Why Using Grid Questions Is Probably Hurting Your Data
Even for experienced researchers, intuition about survey design often runs counter to best practices outlined in survey methodology literature. One of the question types that we see used in web survey...
3 min read
10 Tips for Building Effective Surveys
You don’t have to be an expert to build and distribute an effective online survey, but by checking your survey against tried-and-tested benchmarks, you can help ensure you’re collecting the best d...
5 min read
The Dos and Don'ts of Ranking Questions
Ranking questions are an important asset in the survey designers’ toolbox, but they can be tricky to use effectively. Researchers often want to ask respondents to rank huge lists to see what people ...
3 min read
Biased Data Are Bad Data: How to Think About Question Order
The order in which you ask questions can make a huge difference in your data. If you’re not careful, you can inadvertently anchor your respondents and bias your data. And no one wants that. ...
4 min read
Why Including “Don’t Know” Responses Is Hurting Your Survey Data
One of the more common mistakes survey writers make is including a “don’t know” or “no opinion” response. Doing so provides an easy way for respondents to avoid engaging with the subject of ...
3 min read
Avoiding the ‘Yes’ Bias
It’s often harder to say ‘no’ than ‘yes.’ This has been the subject of numerous self-help book chapters and blog posts. However, many people are surprised to learn that this is also a seriou...
3 min read
Optimal Scale Labels: Why They Matter
In our last post, we discussed how many scale points to use and when. We also noted that you’ll get the best data when you verbally label every point. So, how should you go about labeli...
3 min read
Sources of Error in Survey Research
Our post last week outlined the steps of conducting a good survey. This week, we turn to sources of errors in survey research. In this context, errors should not be interpreted to mean “mistakes...
4 min read