Writing Good Survey Questions

Writing good survey questions is part art form, part logic, and part science (as in, people have done a lot of methodical research on what makes for a good survey question and survey design).

Let’s review some general guidelines, adapted from Vaske (2008) Ch.7, as well as Babbie (2013).

Make items clear and unambiguous
Never write double-barreled questions – one question at a time, folks
Respondents must be willing to answer
Questions should be relevant
Short items are best
Avoid negative items
Avoid vague quantifiers if precise estimates can be estimated
Never use loaded, leading, or biased questions
Use response categories that correspond to the question, that are mutually exclusive, and that are exhaustive
Provide information rather than assuming too much respondent knowledge
Limit use of ranking questions and ask respondents to rank only a few items instead of a long list
For open-ended questions that require lots of writing, provide motivational text (i.e. “this question is extremely important so please take your time with answering it”)

Ok, let’s begin!

The exercise below contains 6 survey question examples. For each example, decide why the question is bad, and re-write it to make it good.