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Order Questions Logically

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Questionnaire pyramid 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:

  1. Screener questions
  2. Open-ended questions
  3. General questions
  4. Specific questions
  5. Demographics or Firmographics
  6. Follow-up questions
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.

Comments

To clarify this post, based on a common question I hear in our research webcasts, the section for open-ended questions is optional but needs to occur before general closed-ended questions that have choice lists that might bias what the respondent reports as important.
Posted @ Monday, August 17, 2009 1:19 PM by Jeffrey Henning
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