In my last post, I gave you five ways to increase your survey results. Today, we’ll dive into a few survey question mistakes you should avoid.

Well written questions are critical for a survey’s success in providing you with accurate information and for its completion rate. While you may know what you want to ask in your survey, the way you ask the questions can shape your respondents’ perspective on something and even cause them to unintentionally provide inaccurate answers. Good survey questions should allow thoughtful answers without leading the respondent to one answer or the other, and should not leave them feeling angry or confused. Writing an effective survey can be challenging, but if you avoid these common survey writing mistakes, you will have a great survey in no time.

Survey Mistake #1: Not Setting Clear Objectives

The most important step in a survey is figuring out what you actually want to know. It’s important to make your objectives really clear up front to make survey creation as easy as possible. Stay away from vague goals like measuring “satisfaction.” What do you mean by satisfaction? Do you want to know if your public awareness campaign was engaging and fun? Or if it was informational? Or persuasive? Focus on your end goal. What decisions do you need to make or behavior do you need or change based on the feedback you get.

 

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