THE SURVEY QUESTIONS

With so many different survey question options, how do you choose the right
ones for your needs? Before you start creating those surveys, you need to ask yourself
how you intend to use the results obtained in the survey. Deciding on the exact goals of
your survey beforehand will make the choice of an adequate survey question type much
easier.

Some of the factors that may determine the type of survey questions you’re going to use
include:

 The type of information you need

 The depth of information you need
 The amount of time your respondents have available

Sometimes just slightly varying the types of survey questions and responses can have a
significant impact on the value and quality of the results you obtain, as well as on the
response rate. That’s why you need to pay special attention to the length of your survey
and the number (not just the type) of questions included.

The Ideal Survey Length

Another important point to consider is the length and number of survey questions.
Modern internet users, whose attention span has never been shorter, are exposed
to ridiculous amounts of content every minute of every single day. In such
circumstances, you wouldn’t expect them to sit through mind-numbingly long surveys or
read ridiculously long questions.

With that in mind, the questions should be fairly short. One or two lines of text the most.
When it comes to the number of questions, from our own experience, some of the best-
performing surveys ever have had 8-10 questions.
 5 MOST COMMONLY USED TYPES OF SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Open-ended questions and Closed-Ended Questions

 Open-ended questions
This question type is used to gain more insight into how the respondent feels.
This type of question type requires a lot of attention when analyzing responses,
so use it only when having the response in the respondent’s own words is
important.
Open-ended question example: Describe your relationship with your child.

 Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-ended questions are basically those questions that provide

respondents with predefined answer options to choose from. Usually, those can
be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, a predefined value on a fixed scale, or
with a specific piece of information.The most common types of closed-ended
survey questions include different variations of categorical and interval/ratio
questions.
2. CATEGORICAL QUESTIONS

Categorical or nominal survey questions are a perfect choice if you’re looking to get a
simple, easy-to-analyze count, such as “85% of respondents said online quizzes are
fun” or “48% of men and 63% of women have taken a quiz this year”.

Nominal scales are used for labeling variables, without any quantitative value.
“Nominal” scales could simply be called “labels.” Here are some examples, below.
Notice that all of these scales are mutually exclusive (no overlap) and none of them
have any numerical significance. A good way to remember all of this is that “nominal”
sounds a lot like “name” and nominal scales are kind of like “names” or labels.

There are several types of survey questions that fit this category, the most commonly
used ones being:

 Dichotomous (‘Yes/No’) questions

 Multiple-choice questions
 Checkbox questions

As mentioned above, these types of survey questions enable different types of analyses
(usually involving counts and percentages) and, as such, work very well for graphs and
charts.

Let’s briefly examine each of the mentioned survey question types.

a. Dichotomous Questions

As the word ‘dichotomous’ adds a somewhat unnecessary sense of complexity to the

issue, in the simplest of terms, these are what we generally call ‘yes/no’ questions – the
types of survey questions that can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

If you’re looking for an easy way to ‘screen out’ the people not relevant to your survey,
dichotomous questions are as easy as it gets. They can also be used to segment the
respondents into those ‘who have used’ and those who ‘have not yet used’ your
services.

Tip – if the app you’re using to create your surveys does not support yes/no questions,
you can simply create a multiple-choice question and offer ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ as the only
answer options.

b. Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice survey questions usually offer three or more predetermined answer

options, while they can allow for single or multiple answers (check the checkbox
questions below).

c. Checkbox questions

Checkbox questions are multiple choice-type questions that add the flexibility of being
able to choose more than one option. Add as many answers as you want, and
respondents can pick as many answers to the question as you allow them to.

3. ORDINAL
With ordinal scales, the order of the values is what’s important and significant,
but the differences between each one is not really known.
Take a look at the example below.
 In each case, we know that a #4 is better than a #3 or #2, but we don’t know–and
cannot quantify–how much better it is.
For example, is the difference between “OK” and “Unhappy” the same as the
difference between “Very Happy” and “Happy?” We can’t say.
Ordinal scales are typically measures of non-numeric concepts like satisfaction,
happiness, discomfort, etc.
“Ordinal” is easy to remember because is sounds like “order” and that’s the key
to remember with “ordinal scales”–it is the order that matters, but that’s all you really get
from these.
Advanced note: The best way to determine central tendency on a set of ordinal
data is to use the mode or median; a purist will tell you that the mean cannot be defined
from an ordinal set.

Example of Ordinal Scales

4. INTERVAL/RATIO QUESTIONS

Interval
Interval scales are numeric scales in which we know both the order and the exact
differences between the values.
The classic example of an interval scale is Celsius temperature because
the difference between each value is the same. For example, the
difference between 60 and 50 degrees is a measurable 10 degrees, as is
the difference between 80 and 70 degrees.
Interval scales are nice because the realm of statistical analysis on these data
sets opens up. For example, central tendency can be measured by mode, median, or
mean; standard deviation can also be calculated.
Like the others, you can remember the key points of an “interval scale” pretty
easily. “Interval” itself means “space in between,” which is the important thing to
remember–interval scales not only tell us about order, but also about the value between
each item.
Here’s the problem with interval scales: they don’t have a “true zero.”
For example, there is no such thing as “no temperature,” at least not with
celsius. In the case of interval scales, zero doesn’t mean the absence of value, but is
actually another number used on the scale, like 0 degrees celsius. Negative numbers
also have meaning. Without a true zero, it is impossible to compute ratios. With
interval data, we can add and subtract, but cannot multiply or divide.
Confused? Ok, consider this: 10 degrees C + 10 degrees C = 20 degrees C. No
problem there. 20 degrees C is not twice as hot as 10 degrees C, however, because
there is no such thing as “no temperature” when it comes to the Celsius scale. When
converted to Fahrenheit, it’s clear: 10C=50F and 20C=68F, which is clearly not twice as
hot. I hope that makes sense. Bottom line, interval scales are great, but we cannot
calculate ratios, which brings us to our last measurement scale…

Rating Scale Questions

With rating scale survey questions, the respondents are asked to assess an issue on
the basis of an already predetermined dimension. The question usually displays a range
of answer options that can be on any scale you want (1 to 10, 0 to 100, and so on).

Since most of these scales use numbers as values, it’s important to clarify the gradation
method and clearly explain those values. If the question is ‘How much do you like online
quizzes?’ and you use a 1-10 scale, you need to explicitly state that, for example, 10
means that you just adore them, while 1 means that you’re not really a fan.

When creating a rating scale survey questions, a good idea would be to use the same
rating scales for all questions, as only this way it’ll be possible to compare the ratings
directly with each other (obviously, a value of 3 doesn’t have the same strength on a
scale of 5 as on a scale of 10).

Ratio
Ratio scales are the ultimate nirvana when it comes to measurement scales
because they tell us about the order, they tell us the exact value between units, and
they also have an absolute zero–which allows for a wide range of both descriptive and
inferential statistics to be applied. Everything above about interval data applies to ratio
scales, plus ratio scales have a clear definition of zero. Good examples of ratio
variables include height, weight, and duration.
Ratio scales provide a wealth of possibilities when it comes to statistical analysis.
These variables can be meaningfully added, subtracted, multiplied, divided (ratios).
Central tendency can be measured by mode, median, or mean; measures of dispersion,
such as standard deviation and coefficient of variation can also be calculated from ratio
scales.
This Device Provides Two Examples of Ratio Scales
(height and weight)

In summary, nominal variables are used to “name,” or label a series of values.

Ordinalscales provide good information about the order of choices, such as in a
customer satisfaction survey. Interval scales give us the order of values + the ability to
quantify the difference between each one. Finally, Ratio scales give us the ultimate–
order, interval values, plus the ability to calculate ratios since a “true zero” can be
defined.
Summary of data types and scale measures

5. LIKERT SCALE QUESTIONS

It’s one of the most popular and reliable ways of measuring perceptions,
attitudes, and opinions. Likert scale survey questions are characterized by a wide range
of answer options to choose from, usually ranging from one extreme (e.g. ‘strongly
agree’) to another (e.g. ‘strongly disagree’).

A Likert scale is the sum of responses on several Likert items. Because many
Likert scales pair each constituent Likert item with its own instance of a visual analogue
scale (e.g., a horizontal line, on which a subject indicates his or her response by circling
or checking tick-marks), an individual item is itself sometimes erroneously referred to as
being or having a scale, with this error creating pervasive confusion in the literature and
parlance of the field.
A Likert item is simply a statement that the respondent is asked to evaluate by
giving it a quantitative value on any kind of subjective or objective dimension, with level
of agreement/disagreement being the dimension most commonly used. Well-designed
Likert items exhibit both "symmetry" and "balance".
Symmetry means that they contain equal numbers of positive and negative
positions whose respective distances apart are bilaterally symmetric about the
"neutral"/zero value (whether or not that value is presented as a candidate).
Balance means that the distance between each candidate value is the same,
allowing for quantitative comparisons such as averaging to be valid across items
containing more than two candidate values.
The format of a typical five-level Likert item, for example, could be:

1. Strongly disagree
 2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree

Likert scale questions are especially suitable if you want to question your
audience on a new product release, customer service experience, a recent
development at the company, the success of an event, and so on.

4 Tips for Writing Top-Notch Survey Questions

They say a survey is as good as its questions (the same goes for online quizzes). So, how to make sure
the survey questions you create are nothing short of top-notch?
Be precise, specific, and focus on one topic. In order to get as accurate survey results as possible,
you should be as precise as possible when phrasing your questions and answers. Also, you should aim to
narrow down the topic of your survey and be specific about the desired outcomes.

Avoid using vague words or expressions. We already mentioned that you need to be precise when
phrasing your questions, but we have to repeat it once again – it is that important. The takers need to
comprehend exactly what you mean in order to supply you with an accurate answer.

This is also important with rating scales and similar types of survey questions, where you need to clearly
specify the value of each answer. In other words, you should do your best to make deciding on the
gradation of answers a no-brainer for the questionnaire takers.

Structure it as a question rather than a statement. Due to the acquiescence response bias, a
phenomenon inherent in the human nature, regardless of the content of the survey, its respondents tend
to agree with statements more often than disagree.

This is why it’s always more beneficial to ask questions than to supply the respondents with a ready-
made statement and ask them to agree or disagree. At least if you’re looking to get accurate results. So,
try to avoid ‘leading’ questions that can cause bias.

Determine the ideal number of answer options. Generally, you want to keep your surveys short and
sweet. As already mentioned, 8-10 questions should be optimal.

Once you find your way around different types of survey questions, you’ll quickly realize the full potential
of online surveys and learn how to use them to obtain invaluable data. Different survey question types are
suitable for getting different pieces of information from your respondents. Learning to choose the right
type of survey questions to use helps you focus on obtaining the most relevant information for your
specific needs.

In addition to being able to choose an adequate type of survey questions, you also need to make sure
you use the right tool that will enable you to create actionable surveys with ease.