10 Tips for designing a market research questionnaire

Apr 15

posted by Dr. Suri Weisfeld-Spolter and Dr. Herb Brotspies in Marketing Research | 15 Comments

The purpose of a questionnaire is to help you gather information that will allow you to make an infomed decision to help solve a marketing problem or gather useful marketing information. It can be challenging to identify precisely what your information needs are, what types of questions to ask and how to best measure different concepts you want to learn about.  Designing and writing a useful questionnaire is partially an art and partially a science. Below are some tips to help you navigate through this challenge.

1. Include a brief (two or three sentences) introduction to the questionnaire telling the respondent about the questionnaire, thanking the respondent, detailing the estimated time to completion and assuring respondents of the confidentiality of their answers. This will help increase the response rate.
2. Begin the survey with a screening question(s), to make sure the person you are going to interview is qualified to answer your questions. You want people that are familiar with your product/brand/service/topic to be participating in the survey. The key to the qualifying question(s) is that if the respondent’s answer is ‘no’ to being familiar with or using the product or service, then the survey is terminated and the person does not participate. (Example: I am interested in the perception of customer service at Publix. My target market is current Publix shoppers. Therefore, my screening question could be: “Have you shopped in Publix in the last month?”  If yes, continue, if no, terminate.) 
3. As you develop questions, ask yourself the following to determine if you should use the questions: “Does each question produce information that is necessary to address the research topic and meet the goals of the study?”  If the answer is no, do not include them.
4. Use a variety of survey question types including ratings, rankings, forced choices, and semantic differential scales, to answer your research questions.  Keep in mind the types of questions you ask may limit the method of analysis and quality of the information you can get from analyzing the data.
5. Related to point four, consider using Likert-type questions when measuring attitude and satisfaction.  They are easy to construct and easy for respondents to fill out.  (Example: Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements using the 1 to 5 scale below).
6. When using semantic differential questions, make sure that the descriptors are true opposites of each other.  Semantic differential scales use polar opposites that respondents are asked to choose from to best describe something.  For example, weak and strong, indecisive and decisive, cheap and expensive.  (Example: If asking their perception of a new item on a menu, the polar opposites should not be excellent and ok, as these are not true opposites and will skew the results).
7. Demographic questions go at the end of the questionnaire. Ask demographic questions that are relevant to your research.  These might include age, income, family size, employment status, geographical location, and other information.  These answers will provide useful cross tab analysis by showing response differences between men and women, purchase interest in a product by income level, or influence of family size on product attributes.
8. Be sure that response categories have no problems with mutual exclusiveness. (Example: Your age choices should not be 18-25 and 25-30 because if someone is 25, which category do they belong to?)  Also be sure categories have equal breaks.  For example, the age break of 18-24 has seven ages so all of the age breaks should have seven age breaks.
9. The questionnaire should be easy to complete with clear instructions, clear and simple wording and be neat looking.  For example, if a respondent answers a particular question with a no, they are clearly directed to a different follow-up question than if they answered yes. (The pretest will help with this part!)
10. Always pretest!  But be sure to pretest among the target respondents.  If you are conducting research among mothers with children who are heavy users of laundry detergent testing the questionnaire among college students can give you misleading results. 

Sara Weisfeld-Spolter, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Marketing in H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Weisfeld-Spolter can be reached at sw887@nova.edu; Herbert Brotspies, D.B.A., is a Part-Time Participating Faculty in Marketing in the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Brotspies can be reached at brotspie@nova.edu

This entry was posted on April 15, 2016 at 11:39 AM and has received 4343 views. There are currently 15 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

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• #1 by Morayma Barreto on 4/15/16 - 2:56 PM

  

  I really like this article. Not only that it is very helpful when you are trying to do a survey for a particular brand or product, but also it is very useful for the marketing world. I especially like how it focuses on the questions that need to be asked in order to determine what are the interests that the consumer may have. Logos are so important to catch a consumers' attention. So having a very catchy logo on a brand is instrumental in alluring those consumers where you want them to notice the brand or product at hand. I definitely agree that questions in a survey need to be simple and easy to read so that all levels of age groups may have the advantage of doing the survey.

• #2 by Sami Sheikh on 4/15/16 - 9:03 PM

  

  I honestly think these steps are a must when conducting any type of questionnaire! Assuring your participants that they are taking part in a trusted, spam-free survey is one of the biggest attraction methods one can use when trying to bring more attention to your test. Personally, I know that I would only take part in a survey if the website and environment of the setting looks legitimate and not something fake run by hackers on the Internet. It's so important when it comes to making sure your questions actually make sense because some questions may even draw people away by not making them feel comfortable. Questions that they can relate to and understand clearly are essential. Also, I personally think if a reward or prize is given in the end, it may serve as a stimulus for more people to want to take part! Even people who didn't know anything about the survey will take part by word of mouth and ultimately learn something about what your initiative is. For example, if I took part in a survey about Publix and a prize was I get a $5 gift card, I would tell all of my friends who like buying food that don't even shop at Publix! Then, as they take part in the survey, they learn something that you wanted to convey! Appealing to the people is essential in any form of business or connection in my opinion!

• #3 by Stacy Nwigwe on 4/16/16 - 8:49 AM

  

  Wow! I found this article to be very thorough and helpful. In the very near future I am venturing into a career that involves an ample amount of digital marketing and need to learn about effective techniques and methods to engage customers or clients while obtaining effective feedback to help enhance a brand.I think that a questionnaire is a great idea, but didn't consider all the steps and thought processes that would go into it to make it effective. Thank you for this guideline! I am positive that it will come in handy very soon.

• #4 by Christopher Salazar on 4/16/16 - 10:16 AM

  

  The article was a great read and very effective in explaining the proper way to conduct a survey. I personally have been on both sides of taking surveys where one survey is way to long and takes a very long time to get to the point. You are answering question after question and after a while you still have not gotten to the point. While on the flip side there are surveys that are done right asking specific open ended questions also making the survey taker give as much information as possible for them to better understand a particular brand. I also believe that it really depends on where the survey is being conducted is it in front of a building or is it online where you may have more time on your hand to answer them. This article really does break down some key points in truly designing a great market research survey. Everything does break down to who your audience is and who you are trying to reach out too. Thank you for this article it is a great reference point to always be able to use.

• #5 by Asma Ghafoor on 4/16/16 - 12:25 PM

  

  Like the article suggests a questionnaire is a very powerful tool for a marketing team. If done correctly it can give valuable information that can be used to create a better brand. These suggestions are a must when devising an effective questionnaire. In particular I found keeping the semantic differential questions polar opposites very important. If your question is asking what's you feeling when shopping at Publix, it shouldn't be between a good and fine answer. I've seen this in past questionnaires where the responses are too vague. In this case it makes it very difficult to distinguish between them and the final results may not be accurate of what the surveyee is feeling. Furthermore, I think pretesting is an absolute must in the first step of a questionnaire. If you have a specific target population you need to be able to hone in on that group. This way your results will be relevant to what your trying to test.

• #6 by Cheyenne Rodriguez on 4/16/16 - 12:53 PM

  

  This article really clarifies how efficient a questionnaire can be when a company wants to collect a clear opinion of their corresponding target demographic. However, don't you think surveys and questionnaires tend to have a limited benefit? This is due to the crude fact that people lie in anonymous surveys so they cannot be used without considering that some outliers will skew the data.

• #7 by Harold Davila on 4/16/16 - 2:16 PM

  

  This article was very thorough and provided helpful tips on designing a quality questionnaire. The examples helped me understand specifically how each tip can be applied. As a consumer, I have taken my fair share of surveys and for me, if the questionnaire does not follow tip #9 “The questionnaire should be easy to complete with clear instructions, clear and simple wording and be neat looking.” I will not participate. This article is a great read for any level of marketing, student or professional.

• #8 by Dr. Suri Weisfeld-Spolter on 4/16/16 - 9:38 PM

  

  Thank you all for your insightful comments and glad you found the blog informative and helpful!
  Most of us have had experience either in taking a survey or perhaps in developing one. This is because a survey is the most widely used research method because of its great flexibility. Indeed, these tips were put together based on my esteemed colleague, Dr. Brotspies, and my own extensive experience with questionnaire development.
  Many of you cited great examples of your experiences in taking surveys, and mentioned important criteria that will encourage you to complete the survey, or sometimes to abandon it.
  Research has definitely shown that incentives such as gift cards, the opportunity to win a prize or even the chance to earn extra credit are often great motivators for encouraging respondents to complete the survey. Additionally, the length of the survey can also have a big impact.
  Finally, it is true that though we want respondents to answer truthfully, sometimes this is not the case. We take this into account by surveying a large enough sample size and by asking different types of questions which serve as ‘checks’ to ensure that respondents are being truthful and paying attention to the questions. This allows us to eliminate ‘bad’ data, or untruthful respondents so that their answers do not skew the results.
  Please keep us posted regarding how these tips help you with your own questionnaire development!

• #9 by Quynh My Le on 4/16/16 - 10:25 PM

  

  This is more than just an article, it really a guide for anyone who planning to do some questionnaire research for the success of their own products. I found this very helpful for anyone who planning to research on the market to aim for learning about who successful will their products be once it hit the market. The questions tips really helps in where and what kind of consumer to ask for what type of questions. Not only that the article list step by step of how to ask questions but clearly explained each step, which is really good for those that have no clue of how to do marketing questionnaire. I will send and share this articles with my friends and relative who need to do some research on the market. Lastly, thank you for the great article, from here I know this is such a helpful blog with many great posted. I will also sharing this blog in general for my friends those major in any kind of business.

• #10 by Angel Poulos on 4/17/16 - 1:40 PM

  

  I really enjoyed this post. What I loved the most was how detailed and organized it is. It really explains how to be successful with marketing. Marketing strategies are so important especially when it comes to questionnaires. Each bullet point on this post proves that the Dr.Weisfeld-Spolter and Dr.Brotspies really care about what they are saying and prove to have experience.

• #11 by Katey Blummer on 4/17/16 - 8:14 PM

  

  This article should be called “Guide to writing questionnaires 101.” The steps are extremely detailed and helpful. I agree one hundred percent that being able to design a useful questionnaire is science. As a marine biology major I feel that I might use this in my field one day. I also know for a fact that this was extremely helpful to complete our group project. Thank you for not only writing this article, but sharing it with us.

• #12 by Ashley Jettoo on 4/17/16 - 11:21 PM

  

  Great article! It was so informative and helpful in learning how to structure a survey to suite any type of brand or campaign. I never realized the depth that surveys should hold in the process of developing them in order to make sure one is able to attain accurate information. Point one is probably one of my favorites from this list because I find a lot of surveys do lack this, including a brief introduction helps to also just set the tone ones response because they actually are properly informed about what this survey is about.

• #13 by Dina Tichon on 4/18/16 - 11:02 AM

  

  Very helpful! The tips for designing a questionnaire are described greatly and in detail. It was very informative on how to form and design questionnaires that will help benefit a company or a brand. Making surveys doesn't seem to difficult but there is actually a lot of work to put in and this made me realize all the key factors that need to be put together to form an accurate survey. Tip #9 seems to be an important factor because if you cannot clearly understand the survey then the results may be inaccurate or biased in a way. These 10 tips will be extremely helpful in my future!

• #14 by mekha mathew on 4/18/16 - 9:18 PM

  

  The article was very informative. It discusses about the importance of questionnaire and how it can help in a marketing field. Like the article has mentioned, designing and writing a questionnaire identifies to figure out a marketing problem and gather important information. It is one of the effective ways companies can engage with the customers and understand their needs and use that to help and enhance their growth.

• #15 by Felix on 9/8/16 - 8:28 PM

  

  this is a well written article to help readers knows how to design questionnaires to suite any campaign...great work