Anecdote: Getting your survey questions tuned

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13/06/06 |

Getting your survey questions tuned

By Andrew. Filed in Fun, Social networks.

Cute cat It seems to me that the word ‘survey’ is often clumped together with other words like ‘mother-in law’,‘cane toad’, ‘pestilence’ and maybe even ‘microsoft’. For all that we hate surveys they are still a powerful way of getting things done. There is definitely a science and an art involved in producing a ‘good’ survey.

For anyone putting together a survey, one thing you will need to do is design your questions. The language that you use can have a big impact on the response rates which you get on your survey and also how ‘threatened’ people may feel answering your survey questions. Here is a humourous example (albeit adapted from "Asking questions") of some different ways to ask the question: “Did you kill your pet cat?”.

A. The casual approach:

“Did you happen to kill your pet cat?”

B. The numbered card/option approach:

“Please choose from the options below which correspond to what became of your pet cat”

(1) Natural death (2) I killed him (3) Other (what?)

C. The Everybody approach:

“As you know, many people have been killing their pet cats these days. Did you happen to kill yours?”

D. The “Other People” approach:

(1) “Do you know any people who have murdered their pet cats?”

(2) “How about yourself?”

Disclaimer: No pets were harmed in the making of this blog post.

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