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Getting your survey questions tuned
Filed in Fun.
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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