Use open-ended questions to get the right answer set

Posted on Tue, 11/06/2007 - 20:53 by Steve Oriola
Writing good survey questions is not easy. You want to ask the question in a way that gives you valuable information. You also want to make the survey questions easy to respond to. The best way to do that is to come up with a short, yet comprehensive list of answers that people can choose from. Therein lies the difficulty.

Since the purpose of the survey is to better understand a particular subject or issue, how can you be sure that you're thinking of the right answer options? My favorite way out of this dilemma is to write a survey with open-ended questions. I invite about 5% of my prospective survey takers to take this open ended survey. This gives me a manageable amount of feedback to review.

I take the answers I received and group them based on similarity and then use that grouping to write my answer options for the question. When I do this, the results of my second survey sent to the other 95% of the people on my list is more easily interpreted. And, in the case that I didn’t cover an answer, I still provide a place for respondents to comment.

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Use open-ended questions to yield right answer set
Posted on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 15:51 by Anonymous
Steve, Your suggestion of deriving answer choices from a trial open-ended survey is an excellent one. How about also including another choice--"Other" followed by an "Please explain" field. I plan to use your technique! I sometimes find that none of the answers provided in online surveys applies. In these situations, forcing a choice yields data that is easy to process, but misleading. Regards, Ruth Winett Winett Associates Framingham, MA
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You're right
Posted on Mon, 11/12/2007 - 21:30 by Steve O.
You're right about many survey questions and the answer options. It's frustrating for the survey taker when none of the options apply. I'm guessing that's a big reason for people not finishing surveys. Adding an "other" field with an open-text response is a good solution. Hopefully, over time you'll develop enough expertise in the subject matter so that your answer options satisfy the majority of your survey takers. Thanks for the comments.
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