Structuring a questionnaire: expert tips on flow, layout and technical details

Questionnaire structure and flow

The questionnaire should give participants as positive an experience as possible. The challenge is to make the questions self-explanatory and the flow of questions as smooth as possible. A standard questionnaire has three parts: (1) the introduction with the privacy notice and, where required, the consent request, (2) the set of questions, divided into question blocks if needed, and (3) the thank-you page.

The first page has to hold on to whatever interest participants already have and persuade those who are still undecided to take part. To keep the drop-out rate on the first page as low as possible, put the basic information at the start, in a clear and easy-to-understand form:

• Topic
• What respondents gain from taking part
• How long the survey takes
• Deadline for taking part
• Who is responsible and who to contact

On the first page, the privacy notice should also explain how anonymity is protected, how the data is stored and used, and when it will be deleted. Where required, ask for consent there as well. If you set cookies to prevent people from taking part more than once, say so.

• Make it clear who is responsible for the questionnaire and make it easy for respondents to get in touch. You can add a legal notice and an email link to the survey footer so that respondents can ask questions directly.
• A good questionnaire is structured so that the topic blocks follow on from each other logically and participants can see that logic.
• Especially with more difficult topics, consider opening with a simple “icebreaker” question that draws on respondents’ own experience and that everyone can answer easily.

Tip: Where it makes sense, you can put short instructions for completing the questionnaire, perhaps with an example, before the main section.

Tip: Use attributes, skip logic, filters and visibility conditions so that respondents only see the questions that are relevant to them.

Use mandatory questions sparingly. They are essential when questions are linked to filters or visibility conditions, but otherwise they tend to put people off.

• This applies in particular to sensitive questions (e.g. income) and to open-ended questions, which take more effort to answer anyway.
• For mandatory filter questions, a specific note may be helpful (“Please make sure you select an answer here, as it determines how the survey continues. Thank you!”).

Tip: Especially in longer surveys, make sure the questionnaire does not become monotonous. It can help to use a deliberately wide range of question formats (provided, of course, that this fits the purpose of the survey). You can also add text blocks with transitions to break up the survey.

Tip: The rule of thumb for survey length is “as short as possible, as long as necessary” (see Surveys that are too long). That said, how willing people are to take part and to keep going depends above all on how interested they are in the topic. Either way, the completion time you state in advance must be accurate. You can establish it in the pretest.

Tip: For longer surveys, you can enable the option to pause and resume. Respondents can then finish the survey at a time that suits them. For (very) long surveys, one solution may be to split them into two or more shorter surveys on the individual topics, run at different times.

Layout

An appealing layout helps motivate people to take part. LamaPoll gives you everything you need to design the questionnaire the way you want, both through the menus and with your own stylesheet.

• The questionnaire carries your company’s corporate identity. Follow your corporate wording and, where they exist, your design guidelines (fonts, logo and colours).
• At the same time, keep the questionnaire as clear as possible (sometimes less is more) and avoid overly long pages where you can, because lots of scrolling is tiring.

Tip: In a final check, review spelling, grammar and punctuation in all texts and questions. Ideally, ask someone who has not seen the questionnaire before to proofread it.

Technical details

To make the questionnaire as convenient as possible for participants, keep the following in mind:

• Show the progress bar, especially in longer surveys, to help prevent drop-outs.
• If you embed images or videos in the questionnaire, keep loading times short.
• If you use attributes, filters, skip logic or visibility conditions, keep the number of conditions as low as possible so the logic stays easy to follow. Test the routing systematically, especially in more complex questionnaires.

Sociodemographic questions

Depending on the context, you will most likely collect personal information about participants as well as data on the survey topic. In a customer survey, for example, you would need information about the context in which your product is used, such as:

• Industry and company size
• The respondent’s level in the hierarchy
• Type of work
• Specific expertise
• etc.

The demographics block goes either at the beginning or (more commonly) at the end of the questionnaire. The argument for asking for this data first is that it can serve as a kind of “warm-up”. If you put the demographics section at the end, respondents have almost finished the questionnaire by then, so they are likely to answer these last questions too, because the end of the survey is in sight.

Tip: Bear in mind that, taken together, demographic data can in individual cases weaken or even remove respondents’ anonymity, even in anonymous surveys (see anonymity threshold). When asking for personal details, always follow the principle of data minimisation: collect only the characteristics you need for your analysis.

Author of the guest article “Expert Tips”:
Elisabeth Kerkhoff, graduate social scientist

kerkhoff@extern.lamapoll.de