Unclear questions are one of the most common mistakes when creating a survey. If a question allows several readings, every respondent understands something different and your answers are no longer comparable. So word each question so that only one reading is possible, unless you deliberately want the ambiguity.
Where ambiguity comes from
- Ambiguous words: “engaged” can mean “committed to their work” or “about to be married”. Is it clear from the context which you mean?
- Unclear reference: “the customer broke the product”, did it arrive broken or did the customer break it themselves?
- Sentence structure: “They saw the manager with the binoculars”, who had the binoculars?
- Punctuation: “Let’s eat, Grandma” versus “Let’s eat Grandma”. A single comma changes the whole meaning.
How to word questions clearly
- One question, one thing. Never ask about two things at once.
- Avoid words with several meanings, or make the intended sense clear in the sentence.
- Watch the references. What do “it”, “this” or “they” point to?
- Read the sentence aloud. Where you stumble over a comma, so does the respondent.
Secure it with a pretest
A pretest is the most reliable way to surface unclear wording. Give the questionnaire to a few people who are not familiar with the topic and afterwards ask how they understood each question. Often it is only the differing answers that reveal a question was read in different ways.
A comment field under critical questions makes misunderstandings visible too. You will often draw more insight from the comments than from the predefined answer options.
When you are the one sitting at question 30 on page 18, it is easy to lose the outside view. So test your survey at least once before the big launch. In LamaPoll you can simply create tester accounts that can comment on the survey.
A question should be not only unambiguous but also concrete and limited to one thing, more on that under Imprecise Questions.
What is LamaPoll?
LamaPoll is an online survey tool for creating employee surveys and measuring employee satisfaction. With us, you can create, conduct, and analyse all types of employee surveys.
Set up your employee survey in just a few steps, customise it with your company's corporate design, and invite your employees conveniently by email or via your intranet. You'll gather insights to boost employee satisfaction in no time. Sign up for free with our online survey tool. You can then run surveys for up to 50 employees immediately and with no obligation. If you need more responses for your online employee survey, simply use our monthly plans. You can also make use of our templates and examples for employee survey questionnaires.
