Online Survey
Guidelines for Writing a Questionnaire or Online Survey
Initial guidelines:
Keep it short. Keep the questions brief and to the point. Keep the questionnaire about 5 minutes in duration.
Include a consent form for all participants. Do not guarantee complete confidentiality to the participants.
Provide clear, specific instructions at the top of the questionnaire.
The questions:
Make the questions as clear as possible. Do not use confusing language or phrasing.
Be sure that questions contain only one idea. (Avoid questions like the following: Do you think the food served on campus is good and do you wish there were more options?)
Design questions that will provide you with answers to the questions you are studying.
Be sure questions are worded in such a way that they will not influence the answers or make assumptions. (Example: How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke per week? How badly does social media make you feel about your body?)
Questions should move from the least sensitive to the most sensitive; from facts to opinions; from the more
general to the more specific.
Thinking ahead to tabulating responses:
Determine if you want all questions to be “closed” (that is, all respondents select from provided answers) or open-ended (respondents use their own words and provide their own answers). Design the questionnaire or survey accordingly.
Make sure that you can measure the responses. Consider using rating scales as answer choices. Rating scales and yes/no questions are easy for participants to answer and researchers to tabulate in Quantitative Descriptive Survey Research.
