Order Questions Logically
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Jun 09, 2009
Over the past 22 years, I have helped many clients write surveys, and more often than not, novice authors listed the questions in the questionnaire simply in the order in which the questions occurred to them. Good surveys have a natural flow to them, but to achieve that flow typically requires editing and reordering.
By rearranging your questions to follow a standard order, your respondents will have a better experience. I often use an inverted pyramid approach, drilling down:
- Screener questions
- Open-ended questions
- General questions
- Specific questions
- Demographics or Firmographics
- Follow-up questions
- Post-survey assessment
You could follow the links and read each of these posts separately, but for a more cohesive view of structuring questionnaires, I'd recommend downloading a copy of the ebook
Survey Software Success and checking out chapter 5.