Tips to designing a good survey questionnaire

Survey questionnaire is a set of questions intended to collect data from the respondents to be used by the research. In marketing, survey questionnaire is very effective in finding out what customers need and what potential clients want for your products or services. It may be very simple to make a survey questionnaire as long as the proper design is used.

• A questionnaire should be made simple and short. But don’t forget that all information you need must be included in the survey form. You should develop first an objective for the research and that would serve as your guide in framing your questions.

• Avoid writing questions with multiple meanings and contain technical terms. If the researchers will allow this, respondents will be more confused in answering the question thus, defeating the purpose of collecting useful information. It is also suggested to use multiple choice formats because it is easier to answer, encode, and analyze the responses. Also, don’t try to gather information in just one questions as this can lead to other problems such as misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

• Don’t forget to include the instructions in your survey. There must be an overall instruction that would introduce the survey to the respondents. If the questionnaire is composed of sets, make sure that proper instructions are also given.

• Avoid invading the privacy of the respondents. Don’t ask for personal information because these may cause annoyance among the respondents. Once personal questions are asked, some respondents will not be encouraged anymore to complete the survey. If personal information is greatly needed, the best thing to do is to put the questions at the ending part of the questionnaire. Make sure to place all relevant answers after the question. Irrelevant choices can be the cause of distraction and unnecessary answer from your respondents. The choices must also be consistent in to avoid giving clues to the respondents.

Developing an effective questionnaire requires careful planning and construction. If you want to gather reliable information that would help you achieve success for your business, then start with an effective survey questionnaire design.