How to avoid common mistakes
Every questionnaire is unique – it pursues different objectives, is aimed at different participants and always has a different context.
Nevertheless, some rules apply to all questionnaires. This means that certain mistakes can occur in any questionnaire. To help you avoid these frustrating mistakes, we have put together some useful tips:
Read on to find out what else you should consider when creating questionnaires with an online survey tool:
Missing answer options
Your answer options should be comprehensive. If relevant options are missing from your questionnaire, many participants will either have to select an inaccurate answer or will be unable to answer at all. This leads to inaccurate results and frustrated participants. Use appropriate answer categories or include a comment field (an open-ended or text-entry question) on every page of your questionnaire, or even beneath every question.
- Incorrect (employee survey): Are you satisfied with your new IT equipment? Answers: Yes / No
- Correct: Answers: Yes / No / I have not received any new IT equipment
- Incorrect (customer survey): How do you travel to our outlet? Answer: By bus, rail or car
- Correct: Answer: Bus, rail, car, train, taxi, bicycle, on foot, plus a text-entry field
Tip: Nowadays, customer surveys asking about gender no longer offer only “male” or “female”, but also include the answer option “diverse”.
Simple yes/no questions are often not exhaustive
Consider the seemingly simple question “Do you enjoy living in XY?” with the answers “Yes” and “No”.
The participant may think:
Well, I feel comfortable here. On the other hand, there are many things that bother me. Neither yes nor no really applies.
Or consider the question “Can you imagine growing old in this area?” with the answer options “Yes” and “No”.
The participant may think:
I can imagine many things. If the neighbourhood stays as it is, I will move away. However, I can also imagine changes taking place here (because of construction work or the redevelopment of XY), in which case I would stay. What should I answer?
More nuanced scales, more precise questions or text-entry fields can help in such cases.
What is LamaPoll?
LamaPoll is a survey tool for creating online questionnaires. Our survey tool lets you create, run and analyse online questionnaires quickly and easily. Create your questionnaire in just a few steps, customise it for your organisation and conveniently invite customers or employees by email. An online questionnaire enables you to gather insights quickly and easily to improve customer or employee satisfaction. You can register for the LamaPoll survey tool free of charge and immediately create and run online surveys with up to 50 participants. If you need more responses for your online questionnaire, simply choose one of our plans: billed monthly, cancel any month. You can also choose from our online questionnaire templates and examples.
