Market Research Expert

This week’s top ten is a blog post from Ci Research Managing Director, Colin Auton, on the “art” of good questionnaire design.

When working as the company’s head of market research or insight, there is nothing more frustrating than stumbling upon someone who has decided to conduct their own survey without consulting you first. More often than not, you are handed a fairly basic questionnaire and are left thinking “If only I knew you were doing this. I could have designed this survey so you could have got so much more from it”.

Perhaps it is not surprising that people take it upon themselves to dive in and design their own questionnaires. On the surface it seems an easy thing to do. On the other hand would colleagues start to take on other marketing tasks themselves, such as designing creative materials or doing their own PR? Typically not!

 In all honesty it is only likely that this trend to “do-it-yourself” will continue, particularly with the emergence of the likes of Survey Monkey. With this in mind we would simply like to highlight to non-researchers that there is an art to designing a good questionnaire, and some useful rules to follow. Our top 10 tips are listed below:

 1. Think about your introduction

Positioning the survey upfront is important. Try to make the respondent feel that their views are important and look to highlight what the benefit is to them in taking part. Also be open and honest in advising on how much of their time will be required, and more specifically how their feedback might be used. True market research can’t be used to generate sales leads, and where individual views are to be fed back to the client you should get permission to do this and explain how this will be used.

 2. Screen out anyone that might be inappropriate

As a general rule of thumb you would always look to exclude anyone that works in marketing, advertising or market research. The theory is that they will have insight into why certain questions are being asked, and may therefore bias the results. For similar reasons you should look to screen out anyone who works in your sector.

 3. Think about the flow

The best questionnaires flow in a logical order for the respondent and thus make for a more survey friendly experience. For example, it is deemed good practice to order questions for satisfaction surveys in line with the order that the customer will have experienced the service.

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Tags: Ci Research, Colin Auton, insight, Likert scale questions, market research, Profiling, Questionnaire design, Questionnaire design tips