How can you write clear and unbiased transportation planning survey questions?

1 Know your purpose and audience

Before you start writing your survey questions, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. What are the main objectives and research questions of your survey? Who are the target respondents and how will you recruit them? How will you analyze and use the data? These questions will help you define the scope, format, and tone of your survey questions.

2 Use simple and specific language

Your survey questions should be easy to understand and answer. Use simple and specific words that are familiar to your audience and avoid jargon, acronyms, technical terms, or vague expressions. For example, instead of asking "How satisfied are you with the multimodal accessibility of your destination?", ask "How easy or difficult is it to get to your destination by walking, biking, driving, or taking public transit?".

4 Use appropriate question types and scales

When creating a survey, depending on the type of information you want to collect, you can use different question types and scales. Closed-ended questions offer a fixed set of choices or responses and are easy to answer and analyze, but they may limit the range and depth of feedback. Open-ended questions allow respondents to write their own answers in their own words, providing rich and detailed feedback, but they are more difficult to answer and analyze. Mixed questions combine both closed-ended and open-ended elements, balancing the advantages and disadvantages of both question types, but they may take more time and effort to answer and analyze. When using closed-ended questions, it is important to consider the number of choices provided (three to seven is a good rule of thumb), the order of choices (logical or natural way), scale type and labels (Likert scales, semantic differential scales, or frequency scales). You should also avoid using negative or reversed scales or labels that can confuse or mislead the respondents.

5 Test and revise your survey questions

Prior to launching your survey, it is important to test and revise the survey questions to guarantee their clarity, accuracy, and relevance. To do this, you should conduct a pilot test with a small sample of your target audience and ask for feedback on the survey questions. After reviewing the results of the pilot test, you should identify any issues or problems with the survey questions. Based on the feedback and results, you can revise the survey questions by rewording, adding, deleting, or rearranging them. Following these tips and best practices will help you create clear and unbiased transportation planning survey questions that can provide reliable and useful data for your transportation planning projects.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?