Questionnaire Design - Starting is the Hardest Part!
When working with potential clients, they often ask, how do you design a questionnaire? Although it is a standard question to ask, the answer is most definitely not standard. There may be some similarities across surveys for common metrics like Net Promoter Score, but in most cases when you begin writing a questionnaire for a new research study, you are starting from scratch. Getting started can be a very daunting task, but a good tip for starting the process is to ask the five W’s, plus one H: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? The answers to these questions not only help in survey design, but also aid in your overall research plan. Below are some common answers to these questions:
Who?
Customers
Patients
Consumers
Buyers
Prospects
Students
Millennials
What?
Quantitative data
Qualitative data: In-depth interviewers, focus groups, discussion boards, etc.
Where?
Online
Mail
Phone
In-person
When?
Results are needed as soon as possible or by specific date
One-time study
On-going tracker
Longitudinal
Why?
Determine brand awareness & usage
Gauge customer/patient satisfaction
Monitor customer/patient behavior
Create user/customer/patient profile
Create non-user/non-customer/non-patient profile
Conduct competitive analysis
Measure new product viability & pricing
Check potential market feasibility
Test advertising
How?
Collection of data via an online panel
Collection of data via client provided email addresses, phone numbers, or mailing addresses
Collection of data via purchased list of phone numbers or mailing addresses
Collection of data using some combination of the above
After you answer these key questions, starting with an outline is very helpful. The two bookends of this outline are an easy place to start in that you most often start with screening and end with demographics. Middle sections are less straightforward and may vary for each survey. However, there are some larger themes that can help get you started. Below are themes for 5 major sections of a questionnaire, including some examples for each:
1. Screening: used to qualify respondents, may overlap slightly with demographics
Household/company decision maker
General household location
Current or past work in market research
Current awareness of brand or product
2. Global Questions: gauge more general/overall opinions and perceptions
Overall opinion
Overall satisfaction
Likelihood of future use/purchase
Likelihood to recommend – Net promoter score
Loyalty measures
3. Individual Attributes: more precise in nature, used to drill down to precise topics
Agreement statements about brand, experience, product usage, etc.
Satisfaction levels/rating of individual experience components
Opinion on individual pricing components
Choice based exercise for conjoint or MaxDiff analysis
Membership benefits
4. Behavior/Lifestyle questions: often used for segmentation
Buying/usage patterns
Hobbies
Interests
5. Demographics: used for profiling, as well as possible segmentation
Gender
Age
Household size
Household income
Ethnicity
Education level
Hopefully this helps in simplifying the process of getting started on survey design. The ANA Research Questionnaire Design Blog will be on-going. Coming up next – question wording and scaling considerations.
Please feel free to reach out to kim@ana-inc.com with any questions on this blog or questionnaire design in general.
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