Asking the right questions is the key to getting insightful and actionable answers from your surveys and polls. Discover how SurveyMonkey can help by signing up for a free account.
If you take the time to write good survey questions, you’ll be well on the path to getting the reliable responses you need to reach your goals. Writing good survey questions isn’t difficult. We’ve created this guide so you can understand best practices and get quick tips to help you create good survey and poll questions—ones that generate useful insights and data.
Using templates that include survey questions can speed up your survey creation process, ensuring you are asking good questions that elicit useful answers from the audiences and demographics you are targeting. You can then analyze and present your survey results in a variety of formats, such as a word cloud, that creates a visual representation of the most common words and phrases in your responses. Success in your surveys first depends on the types of survey questions to use.
Surveys can be a powerful tool for gathering feedback, data, and insights from your target audience. But creating a good survey that provides useful information takes skill and planning. Follow these tips to learn how to write an effective survey that delivers actionable results
Start with the Survey Goals and Audience
Before writing your survey questions, take some time to think through your goals and target respondents. Ask yourself:
- What do I want to learn from this survey?
- What data and insights will be most useful?
- Who will be taking the survey? Customers? Employees? What do I know about them?
Having a clear understanding of your goals and audience will allow you to craft relevant questions that get to the information you need
Use Simple, Clear Language
Write survey questions using simple, clear, and neutral language that respondents will easily understand. Avoid technical jargon, industry lingo, or other terminology your audience may not be familiar with.
You want questions that are unambiguous and lead all respondents to interpret them in the same way. Clear wording gets you reliable consistent data.
Some tips for question wording:
- Use simple sentences of 15-20 words or less
- Avoid abbreviations or acronyms unless commonly known
- Define any terms that may be unfamiliar
- Use active voice (“Do you recommend our product?”) rather than passive (“Is our product recommended by you?”)
Focus on Closed-Ended Question Types
Closed-ended questions that provide a set of answer options—like multiple choice, scales, rankings, or yes/no questions—tend to work better on surveys than open-ended questions.
Some pros of closed-ended questions:
- Answers are easier and faster for respondents to select
- Answers are standardized for easy analysis
- Results are quantifiable and comparable
- Response rate is usually higher
You can follow up closed-ended questions with “Why?” open-ended questions if you need additional context. But limit these to keep the survey focused and concise.
Avoid Double-Barreled Questions
A double-barreled question asks two things at once, making it impossible to discern which one the respondent is answering. For example:
- Do you agree that our new policy is fair and will increase engagement?
This should be split into two separate questions:
- Do you agree that our new policy is fair?
- Do you agree that our new policy will increase engagement?
Keeping questions focused on a single topic will provide clear, useful data.
Use Balanced Answer Scales
When using rating scales provide balanced options on both ends of the scale to eliminate bias. Don’t just offer a scale from “Satisfied” to “Very Satisfied”—add options for dissatisfaction as well. For example:
- Very Dissatisfied
- Dissatisfied
- Neutral
- Satisfied
- Very Satisfied
Balanced scales allow you to accurately capture levels of satisfaction vs. dissatisfaction.
Ensure Exhaustive and Exclusive Answer Options
When using multiple choice or multi-select questions, the answer options should include all possible responses related to the question. This is called making options exhaustive.
Options should also be mutually exclusive, meaning there’s no overlap between options. Respondents should be able to clearly select one or multiple options without confusion.
Double check your answers are both exhaustive and exclusive to prevent missed responses or inaccurate data.
Include an Opt-Out or N/A Option
Add options like “None of the above” or “Not applicable” whenever appropriate. This allows respondents to opt out of answering if they don’t have an opinion or the question doesn’t apply to them.
You don’t want to force respondents into picking an option that doesn’t reflect their true response. Offer them a way to essentially say “I don’t know” or “This doesn’t apply to me.”
Avoid Asking Respondents to Predict Future Behavior
It’s common for survey writers to ask respondents questions like “Will you recommend us to a friend?” But studies show people are very bad at predicting their future actions.
Instead of hypotheticals about what they will do, ask about their current perceptions, opinions, and attitudes. For example:
- How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend or colleague?
This provides a much more accurate picture compared to speculative questions.
Use Logical Question Grouping and Ordering
Organize your survey questions in a logical order based on topic or theme. Group related questions together in sections, and sequence sections sensibly.
You should also start with the most important questions first in case respondents start rushing or drop off toward the end. Put demographic/background questions that require more thought at the end.
Logical organization creates a smooth flow and reduces respondent fatigue and drop-off.
Limit Open-Ended Questions
While open-ended questions can provide rich, qualitative data, they take more effort for respondents to answer. Use them sparingly to avoid survey fatigue.
When including open-ended questions:
- Limit to 1-3 per survey
- Place them at or near the end
- Make them optional/non-required if possible
For lengthier responses, it may be better to follow up the survey with interviews or focus groups with select participants willing to provide more detail.
Keep It Short and Concise
In general, shorter surveys get higher completion rates. Aim to make your survey:
- 10 questions or fewer for external audiences like customers
- 25 questions or fewer for internal audiences like employees
Only include questions that directly relate to your research goals. Extraneous questions add unnecessary length. If the survey starts to get too long, cut any “nice to have” questions.
Thank Respondents and Close with a Call to Action
Always close your survey by thanking respondents for their time and feedback. Let them know the results will provide valuable insights.
If you want them to take further action, add a final call to action. For example:
- Thank you for taking our survey today. Your responses will help us improve our products and better serve customers like you. Don’t forget to check out our newest product line—we think you’ll love the new features we’ve added!
This reinforces the purpose of the survey and drives engagement.
Test, Revise, and Proofread Before Distribution
Before finalizing your survey:
- Test it extensively yourself and with a small group to identify any issues
- Revise poorly performing questions
- Proofread to fix any errors or typos
Rigorous pre-testing allows you to refine the survey before sending to a larger sample. This results in higher quality responses.
Following best practices on how to write effective, engaging survey questions takes work. But the payoff is survey data that provides real, actionable insights into your customers or employees. And those meaningful insights lead to better business decisions and results.
Ask closed-ended questions
If you are looking for data that is easy to capture and analyze, closed-ended questions can be your ticket to success. Closed-ended questions generate quantitative data that can be used to measure variables. The answers to closed-ended questions are always objective and conclusive. Another benefit, the data derived from this question type can be presented in very accessible formats showing overall percentages to how respondents answered—graphs and charts are best.
Open-ended questions generate qualitative data, which requires more effort and time for respondents to answer compared to closed-ended questions. Qualitative data is often more time consuming to analyze because it does not generate clear-cut numerical results. When thinking about how to write a great survey, you should consider minimizing the use of open-ended questions. This will also help increase your completion rates as if respondents feel like they have to spend too much time writing in their answers, they’ll leave your survey early.
In general, when writing a survey, you should try to avoid asking more than two open-ended questions per survey or poll. If possible, put them on a separate page at the end. That way, even if a respondent drops out of the survey, you’re able to collect their responses from the questions on previous pages. No doubt, open-ended questions can generate extremely useful insights, but it’s important to be strategic in the ways you use them to get the maximum benefit.
Get more survey guidelines to help you on survey creation.
Keep a balanced set of answer choices
Respondents need a way to provide honest and thoughtful feedback. Otherwise, the credibility of their responses is at risk.
The answer choices you include can be another potential source of bias. Let’s assume we included the following as answer options when asking respondents how helpful or unhelpful your customer service reps are:
You’ll notice that there isn’t an opportunity for respondents to say that the reps aren’t helpful. Writing good survey questions involve using an objective tone. This means adopting a more balanced set of answer options, like the following:
- Very helpful
- Helpful
- Neither helpful nor unhelpful
- Unhelpful
- Very unhelpful
Writing Good Survey Questions – Statistics Help
How do you write a good survey question?
Gain confidence writing good survey questions Writing a good survey means asking questions in a way that lets respondents answer truthfully. At the same time, it means providing respondents with a quick and easy survey-taking experience. The better your surveys get, the better your responses become.
How do you make a good survey?
Figuring out how to make a good survey that yields actionable insights is all about sweating the details. And writing effective questionnaire questions is the first step. Essential for success is understanding the different types of survey questions and how they work. Each format needs a slightly different approach to question-writing.
How do you plan a survey?
It’s best to plan your survey by first identifying the data you need to collect and then writing your questions. You can also incorporate multiple-choice questions to get a range of responses that provide more detail than a solid yes or no. It’s not always black and white.
How long should a survey be?
Best practice is to keep your survey as short as possible. Data suggests that if a respondent begins answering a survey, there is a sharp increase in the drop-off rate that occurs with each additional question up to 15 questions. (Source: SurveyMonkey)
