The way you phrase your questions affects how well the results can be analysed, how employees respond to the survey and how willing they are to take part.
Closed questions with response scales are easy to compare and analyse. Open questions often provide additional insight, but they take more effort to analyse and are less easily comparable. Positively and negatively worded questions can also lead to different results, even when they address the same subject. A suitable survey tool can support you with a plausibility check, but it cannot fully assess the context of your survey.
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Example: the same question, different answers
Question format 1
Do you think that all workers in a company should belong to a trade union?
Responses
- 36%: All should belong to a trade union
- 35%: Against it; it is a matter for the individual
- 29%: Undecided
Question format 2
Do you think that all workers in a company should belong to a trade union, or should it be left to each individual to decide whether they want to belong to a trade union?
Responses
- 14%: All should belong to a trade union
- 81%: Against it; it is a matter for the individual
- 5%: Undecided
Rules for formulating questions
These rules will help you when formulating questions:
- Phrase questions simply, clearly and specifically.
- Ask about only one issue in each question.
- Keep questions short and concise; avoid sub-questions.
- Use terms that your employees understand.
- Avoid complex sentence structures, unfamiliar terms and double negatives.
- Avoid judgemental or leading questions.
- Do not overwhelm your employees.
- Make sure response options are complete, unambiguous and appropriate to the question.
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.
