Pre-selections and default answers can be helpful, encouraging, demanding, or simply confusing. These are answers that are already pre-selected when the employee comes to the question. This can encourage the employee to give their own answer. But depending on the context, it can also lead them to give no answer at all. As a general rule, pre-selections should be very carefully thought through and planned.
For example, if you have already pre-selected “Very satisfied” for a satisfaction question, this may amuse the employee, or it may come across as arrogant. If, however, you pre-select the option “No answer” next to a scale question, the employee notices that they need to move the slider, otherwise no answer will be recorded. The scale question is a good example here, since it always appears to be pre-selected – the slider has to be at some position when the employee sees the question. One remedy is the pre-selected additional option “No answer” mentioned above. To reduce this effect, the slider in the LamaPoll survey tool is transparent when nothing is pre-selected.
Overall, pre-selections are a complex tool. They can influence opinions but also encourage responses, and should therefore only be used with care (or avoided altogether if in doubt).
What is LamaPoll?
LamaPoll is a survey tool for creating employee surveys and measuring employee satisfaction. You can use it to create, conduct and analyse all types of employee survey. Create your employee survey in just a few steps, apply your organisation’s corporate design and invite employees conveniently by email or via your intranet. You can quickly gain insights that help improve employee satisfaction. You can register for our survey tool free of charge and immediately conduct surveys for up to 50 employees with no obligation. If you need more responses to your online employee survey questionnaire, simply choose one of our monthly plans. You can also use our employee survey questionnaire templates and examples.
