How to Write Good Questionnaires

To have good rate of response and to improve the validity of research, it is important that the questionnaires are well prepared and well constructed. The following points should be kept in mind to design and structure an effective questionnaire.

The questionnaire should be kept short

Complicated and long questionnaires greatly reduce chances of receiving a good response from the participants. Therefore they should stick to the very useful or relevant information needed and any extra questions related to secondary, supplementary or data that is unnecessary should be discarded.

The questionnaire should be carefully targeted

An effort must be made to find out the most appropriate people, because it is very much possible that entire purpose this exercise be defeated if the participants ignore the rest o the questions, if they fail to understand the initial questions answer the questionnaire. It is better to inform the target people by phone or email before sending the questionnaire.

The anonymity question of the participants should be addressed

If the questionnaire contains personal or sensitive questions, the respondents should be convinced that all answers will be kept confidential.

Incentive for answering

An incentive is an important component to motivate people to respond so some token gift should be offered to the respondents. If that is not possible than respondents should be provided with survey results.

Polite reminders

Polite reminders should be sent to the respondents so that they can answer the questionnaire. But it should be kept in mind those reminders do not irritate the respondents.

Language should be kept simple

Questions should be in an unambiguous yet simple language so that they are instantly understood. Jargons or abbreviations which may not be known to some of the target sample should be completely avoided.

Don’t make it too informal or formal

Use of “standard”, neutral grammar and vocabulary should be done while writing a questionnaire.

Questionnaire should be interesting

To grab the reader’s attention, the questionnaire should be interesting. The relevant questions will immediately seek to involve a respondent with the questionnaire, and respondents are more likely to finish the entire questionnaire.

Leading questions should be avoided

The questions which are leading or seeking to invoke a particular response should be avoided.

Using open-ended questions should be avoided

Personal questions that require a more sensitive and personal answers from the respondents should be avoided as answering such questions is tedious both for the respondents and the analyzers.