Designing your questionnaire has never been easier. Get an online questionnaire up and running in just a few simple steps with SmartSurvey.

• Choose from a wide range of question types to create your survey
• Distribute your survey via email and SMS, share via social media
• Analyse your results in real-time, create graphs, export data

How to create an online survey or questionnaire

When you create a questionnaire, it’s important to know how to write questions that will yield the most accurate and valuable results from your respondents. It’s not a case of just writing down all the questions that come to mind.

With the right kind of questionnaire software, as well as practice, you’ll have an easier time creating the most effective online questionnaire for your needs.

Tips for designing online questionnaires

Keep the wording simple

When writing questions for a survey, it’s important to make sure they’re clear and will be easily understood. You might want to add technical terminology specific to your industry, however, refrain from doing so. There’s a good chance that some of your respondents won’t understand the meaning behind all of the words, which may lead to confusion. If questions aren’t clear enough for your respondents they may just guess the answers, which will lead to inaccurate data.

Only use individual questions

It can be tempting to add two questions into one, however, this is also something that should be avoided. This is because each question might have different results. If an individual only has the option to choose one answer, the results won’t be accurate.

Allow respondents to choose “other”

When creating a multiple choice questionnaire, it really helps to have “other” as an option for individuals to choose. Some of your respondents may not see their answer reflected in the choices you’ve provided and without the option to choose “other” then there’s a good chance they’ll just choose any answer. This will lead to flawed survey data.

Be specific

Always make sure your survey questions are specific. Broad questions can become confusing and unclear. Make sure you explain exactly what you’re looking and specify exactly what you want to know about. This is especially the case when it comes to comment or essay box questions.

Offer the option to skip personal questions

There are a lot of online questionnaires that request personal information from the respondent. Not everyone is comfortable providing this information. If you need to add personal questions into your questionnaire design, allow your respondent to skip the question if they wish to. To do this, you can add an answer that says “prefer not to say” instead of an actual answer. Also, make sure your question is not set to ‘mandatory’. This will make individuals feel better because you won’t be forcing an answer out of them.

Remember the target market

When creating an online questionnaire, it’s important to keep your target audience in mind. This will help you use the appropriate terminology and ask the questions in the most effective way.

Choose the right tool

SmartSurvey offer user-friendly yet advanced online questionnaire software that requires no technical knowledge to create online surveys. You can create questionnaires or surveys from scratch or use one of our questionnaire templates. If you have questions about SmartSurvey why don’t you contact our friendly support team.

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