How do you balance the length and depth of your survey questions?

1 Start with a clear goal

Before you write any survey questions, you need to have a clear goal for your survey. What do you want to learn from your users? How will you use the data to improve your product or service? Having a clear goal will help you focus your questions on the most important topics, and avoid asking unnecessary or irrelevant ones.

2 Use a mix of open and closed questions

Depending on your goal, you may want to use a mix of open and closed questions in your survey. Open questions allow your users to express their opinions, feelings, or experiences in their own words, while closed questions give them a set of predefined options to choose from. Open questions can provide more depth and insight, but they also require more time and effort from your users and from you to analyze. Closed questions can provide more quantifiable and comparable data, but they also limit the range of responses and may not capture the nuances or context of your users' feedback. A good balance is to use open questions sparingly, and only when you need to explore a specific topic in more detail, and use closed questions for the rest of your survey.

3 Keep your questions short and simple

One of the most common mistakes in survey design is to ask long, complex, or confusing questions. These can frustrate your users, reduce their engagement, and affect the quality of their responses. To avoid this, keep your questions short and simple, using clear and concise language, avoiding jargon or technical terms, and breaking down complex topics into smaller chunks. A good rule of thumb is to limit your questions to one sentence, and to use one idea per question.

4 Avoid leading or biased questions

Another common mistake in survey design is to ask leading or biased questions, which can influence your users' responses and skew your data. Leading questions are those that suggest a desired answer or imply a certain opinion, while biased questions are those that favor or disfavor a certain option or group. For example, "How much do you love our product?" is a leading question, while "Do you prefer our product or our competitor's product?" is a biased question. To avoid these, use neutral and objective language, and offer balanced and fair options for your users to choose from.

5 Test and refine your questions

Finally, before you launch your survey, you should test and refine your questions, to make sure they are clear, relevant, and effective. You can do this by conducting a pilot survey with a small sample of your target users, and asking them for feedback on your questions, such as how easy or difficult they were to answer, how long they took to complete, and how well they matched their expectations. You can also use tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to check the readability and logic of your questions, and to identify any errors or issues. Based on the feedback and data you collect, you can then revise and improve your questions, until you are confident that they will achieve your goal.

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?