5 pitfalls to avoid when writing a market research questionnaire

Posted by Jennifer Chapelot on October 25, 2019

With the development of “do it yourself” and online questionnaire tools, it seems more and more simple to create a survey alone. And yet, without knowledge of market research, it is easy to fall into numerous pitfalls when writing your questionnaire.

Here we offer you a small TOP 5 of the mistakes that we tend to make when writing a questionnaire for the first time (or not), and our tips to avoid them.

Overusing “yes/no” responses

Beware of this very simplistic type of answer that deprives you of a great wealth of information. As soon as possible, we recommend replacing the “yes/no” answers with a more detailed response scale.

Let's say you want to measure the intention of subscribing to your new service with your target audience. The opinion of very convinced people, who are certain to subscribe to your offer, is more important than that of people who would “maybe” subscribe to it. By only asking your future consumers whether or not they would subscribe to your offer, you are cutting yourself off from this very important precision.

To gather more detailed, and therefore more predictive, information, we recommend a formulation such as:

Would you subscribe to this service if it were available?

• Yes, definitely
• Yes, probably
• I don't know
• No, probably not
• No, certainly not

You can always combine the terms “yes, definitely” and “yes, probably” at the time of your data analysis if necessary.

Do not foresee all scenarios

By default in an online questionnaire, all questions are mandatory. If a person does not find an answer that suits them among your proposals, they will find themselves forced, either to give up or to answer at random to move on to the next question. This would distort your answers, and complicate the collection of your interviews.

It is therefore important to think about offering an escape route for people who would not find an answer that corresponds to them in your questionnaire. For each question, if necessary, consider offering an answer such as:

• I don't know
• Others, specify:
• None of these answers
• Not concerned
• Never
  

Ask anyone anything

In order to ensure the quality of your market research, it is important that for each question in your questionnaire, you ask yourself whether your entire target is concerned, or only a certain part of it.

For example, if at the beginning of the questionnaire, you ask your respondents if they consume fruit juices, there is no need to then ask the people who told you not to consume fruit juices how often they buy them, or what brands they consume.

This may seem obvious, but we very often see this type of careless error in the questionnaires we review at poll&roll.

Setting up filters (or conditional displays) allows you to redirect respondents based on their answers to previous questions. By avoiding forcing some people to answer anything to questions that don't concern them, you avoid skewing your results (and annoying your respondents!).

Turning around the bush

Nowadays, we are used to going fast, and to going from one task to another very quickly. To keep the attention of the people who agree to answer your questionnaire, and to maximize your chances of them going all the way, it is important to get right to the point and offer a clear and concise questionnaire.

In addition to optimizing the response rate to your questionnaire, you will find that a clear and specific question requires a clear and precise answer.

When we write a questionnaire at poll&roll, we try to formulate our questions and our proposed answers with as few words as possible. Our objective: to get to the point and keep only the elements necessary for a good understanding in order to gain efficiency.

A very simple example with an unavoidable question: the intention to buy. A few years ago, when market research was mostly administered by interviewers, face-to-face or by telephone, politeness and decency were the order of the day. This led to formulations such as:

In your opinion, if this product were available at a price that suits you, in your usual store, what would you do, personally...?

• You would definitely buy it
• You would probably buy it
• Not sure if you would buy it or not
• You probably wouldn't buy it
• You would definitely not buy it

Word count: 46.

Today, on the internet, you can get to the essentials:

Would you buy this product if it were available?

• definitely
• Probably
• I don't know
• Probably not
• Certainly not

Word count: 18, and a lot of time and motivation saved for your respondent!

Beware of superimposed answers

The fifth and final pitfall, the superimposed response scales: a very common error and yet so easy to correct.

Ladder questions are present in almost every questionnaire. The most common ones concern age or the frequency of carrying out an action. We are going to use this last type of question as an example to illustrate our final point. Let's say you want to know the frequency of consumption in your category:

How often do you drink orange juice?

• Every day
• Every week
• Every month
• Every year
  

In this frequency scale, if you drink orange juice every morning, you can check off any answer option and always be right. Most people will naturally check off the most frequent proposition that fits them, but others may check off a different proposition.

Again, these imprecise answers, encouraged by an imprecise question formulation, will reduce the quality of the answers collected.

Choose unequivocal scales, with answer options that are very distinct from each other, such as:

How often do you drink orange juice?

• Every day
• Two to three times per week
• Once a week
• Two to three times per month
• Less often
• Never
  

As you can see, the quality of your online questionnaires depends on very few things. It can easily be improved by paying attention to the various points discussed above. And you want to be sure to avoid all the pitfalls, use one of the questionnaire templates validated by our experts.

It's up to you to play!