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Principles of Online Survey Design & Delivery

In preparing online surveys, it is important to determine the right type of questions to include.

In general, survey question writers should:

  • Make sure that individual questions are clear, short, and specific.
  • Use a mixture of different formats and lengths of question so that respondents are not bored or tired. For example, they can incorporate ‘Yes/No’ questions with questions offering 4 or 5 choices.
  • Limit the number of questions in each survey to 20 or fewer questions. By limiting the number of questions, survey designers can increase the number of people who complete the entire survey and answer all the questions.
  • Design questions that extract useful and relevant information from the respondent. Each question in a survey should serve a purpose in gathering information. The questions should also be easier for the respondents to understand and for the survey designers to analyze the information.
  • Choose either open-ended or closed-ended questions based on the information needed.
OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

Open-ended questions are questions that do NOT give the respondent answers from which they can choose. These types of questions are left open deliberately so that the person responding gives their full impression and express their opinions and thoughts in their own words. Examples of open-ended questions are:

1. What do you enjoy the most in shopping online?
2. List the top five (5) products you’ve purchased in the past week.

The advantages of open-ended questions are:

  • They allow the respondent to answer survey questions using their own words.
  • Organizations can gain information on customer requirements, attitudes, preferences, and behaviors that they may not have been aware of.
  • They solicit unbiased information from respondents because they don’t offer ready-made choices or options.
The disadvantages of closed-ended questions are:

  • These are the types of questions that respondents are likely to skip because they require more effort to complete.
  • Some respondents may not be able to think of answers or requirements without choices given in the survey.
  • The results are difficult to compile and present as survey designers must make sense of people’s input.
CLOSED-ENDED QUESTIONS

Unlike open-ended questions, closed-ended ones offer the respondent a number of choices. Survey designers use what is called a Likert Scale with a range of 1-5 or a ranking such as that in Figure 3. The goal of a Likert scale is to allow the respondent a number of choices with a neutral option.

The advantages of closed-ended questions are:
  1. They are easy to administer and analyze.
  2. Respondents are more likely to answer these types of questions.
The disadvantages of closed-ended questions are:
  1. If not properly designed, these types of questions can offer vague or biased choices.
  2. They may not yield information as detailed as that gained from open-ended questions.


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User-friendly survey creation
Surveyonics online survey software gives you the freedom to create, analyze, and publish surveys in minutes. Use existing survey templates or create fresh surveys.
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Choose how users can respond to your Survey questions
Define responses as single correct option, multiple correct options, text boxes, priority lists and various other formats.
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