Demographic questions provide an insight for researchers into the backgrounds of the participants. They typically revolve around the participants’ biographical information such as their age, sex, ethnicity, levels of education and current or past employment. They can also include any background characteristics that you believe to be essential to the research project (Allen, 2017). Typically they are used to provide necessary context for the data collected on a topic.
These questions can be tricky. On one hand, they may be critical to your research, but if they seem unnecessary, they can also lead participants to question the “true” purpose of your survey. Moreover, questions that are not inclusive can lead participants to feel frustrated. In either case, your respondents might not feel comfortable answering your survey questions, so it is important to ask demographic questions with appropriate consideration.
The table below offers a quick overview of what to do and what not to do when asking demographic questions…
| Do… | Don’t… |
| Ask demographic questions that are critical to your research | Ask unnecessary or unrelated demographic questions |
| Ask demographic questions in a way that is inclusive and representative | Ask a question that limits a respondent’s ability to reveal their identity |
Ethics Check
Demographic questions can carry a lot of ethical baggage if you are not careful about how you include them. If you plan to ask your survey participants about their demographics, consider why you are asking these questions and make sure that they are closely related to the focus of your survey (Avineri, 2017).
Once you are satisfied that your demographic questions are clearly related to your research, consider how you pose your questions. You need to ensure that the questions you ask provide answer options that are inclusive. For example, when you are asking about sex and/or gender, ethnicity and race, etc, make sure that the respondent can easily select or write an answer that they feel accurately describes them. Some demographic questions are complex and need to be treated accordingly because a simplistic approach might threaten your data validity. For example, until 2000, selection of more than one racial category was prohibited by the U.S Census. This made it challenging for many people to accurately respond to these demographic questions (Hughes et al., 2016).
How can I make sure that my demographic questions are inclusive?
If you’re worried about writing demographic questions, here’s a tip: don’t reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of examples of how others have asked demographic questions available online. Use what has worked for others.
You can learn more about using demographic questions in surveys when we talk about Filter Questions in our next section on Questionnaire Design, but first, head to the next page to review what you’ve learned in this section!
