XM Knowledge Base
Dave Vannette
Author Bio
Dave Vannette is a contributor to the Qualtrics blog.
Articles attributed to Dave Vannette
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...
By Dave Vannette
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. Mo...
By Dave Vannette
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...
By Dave Vannette
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. A cla...
By Dave Vannette
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 ...
By Dave Vannette