What are high-quality questions?

What are high quality questions?

Question wording can significantly influence the outcome of the survey. It is important to be mindful of question construction to ensure clarity in your survey. Here are ten important things to consider when writing a questionnaire. 

1. One thought per question, – avoid double-barreled questions

Double-barreled questions  ask about two or more ideas or concepts in a single question. This is problematic because the respondents may agree with one part of the question but disagree with the other. (Carr et. al 2018)

2. Avoid leading questions

Survey questions should be as fair and even handed as possible. Leading questions are phrased to “lead” or guide respondents to a particular answer, yielding certain results. (Carr et. al 2018)

3. A question should mean the same thing to all respondents

If the question is “Have you ever been a victim of a serious crime?”, it might lead to different answers as people might have different ideas of what constitutes a serious crime.

4. Avoid biased words and phrases

Watch this video for a brief discussion on biases. 

[Embed Video (2:43 – 3:04)]

5. Make response options exhaustive and mutually exclusive

[definition]

https://makeameme.org/meme/when-someone-asks-5a79d7

[Embed Video (10:08 – 10:47)]

6. Avoid long questions 

Unnecessarily long questions might make it difficult for respondents to grasp the main idea of the question and answer adequately. It required more time and effort to answer an unnecessarily long question.

For example….

Poor: The paucity of psychometric scales with high degrees of stability and construct validity is most bothersome to surveyors when measuring people’s

1. Economic characteristics
2. Feeligns
3. Knowledge
4. Health

Better: The lack of reliable and valid methods causes surveyors the most problems when measuring people’s:

1. Economic characteristics
2. Feelings
3. Knowledge
4. Health

7. Avoid Abbreviations, Jargon, and Uncommon words

It is important to make sure that every respondent understands the questions. One of the ways you can achieve that is to make the language of the survey as accessible as possible. 

Try to avoid uncommon words as well to make it easier for every respondent to grasp what the question is asking and answer accordingly. Take a look at this table below to identify some of the uncommon words and the common words you can change them with: (Choi, Pak)

<div class=”content-box-light-yellow”> For example, if you want to do research on mental health during COVID-19, instead of asking the question directly: “Have you been having mental health issues during pandemic?”, you can first start by inquiring about the respondent’s health in general which puts the respondent in a mindset to think about health. 

This is how Household Pulse Survey did this.

First the question about general health: 

Would you say your health in general is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor? Select only one answer.

__Excellent

__ Very good 

__ Good

__ Fair

__ Poor

Then the following question: 

Over the last 7 days, how often have you been bothered by the following problems … Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge? Would you say not at all, several days, more than half the days, or nearly every day? Select only one answer.

After this, there were three similar questions asking about being worried, “having little interest in doing things”, “feeling down, depressed or hopeless”. 

8. Make sure that the question is concrete.

10. Be careful with sensitive topics.

If you are planning to ask questions about sensitive topics like alcohol consumption, law breaking, death, etc. Make sure that you are careful. (Choi, Pak) 

Test your knowledge

<iframe src=”https://quizlet.com/537622401/test/embed?i=338bft&x=1jj1″ height=”500″ width=”100%” style=”border:0″></iframe>

Question 1:

There were two issues with the question: 

1. It was not exhaustive, meaning not all the options were available to the respondent. For example, if someone was leaving the house less than once a week, they would not be able to accurately answer this question. 

2. It was not mutually exclusive, meaning there was an overlap in multiple choices. If the respondent was leaving the house about 3 times a week, it would be confusing because both second and the third options include that.

Question 2:

The issue with the question was that respondents might not know what PPP is. Giving a brief description helps the respondent understand what the question is about.

Now that you have your questions selected, it’s time to organize them within your questionnaire. 

Back to Surveys