Research Tips
Don’t Ask Unnecessary Questions
Asking more questions than necessary can annoy respondents and reduce survey response rates and response quality. Hence, it’s important to think about each question included in a survey and to consider whether it’s really necessary. Two types of unnecessary questions that frequently appear in surveys are:
- Factual questions that are not respondent-specific. For example, a survey going out to businesses might have a question about the respondent’s industry and then another question about the growth rate of that industry. The second question is unnecessary because once a respondent’s industry has been identified it’s possible to use objective external sources to determine its growth rate.
- Factual questions that are respondent-specific, but can be answered using other sources. For example, customer surveys often include questions about purchase frequency, timing, size, etc., yet the company doing the survey often has this information already. Unless the survey is anonymous, data from the survey can be merged with other sources such as transaction records so that the respondent doesn’t need to provide this data. Even in anonymous surveys, there are sometimes ways to prevent respondents from having to provide duplicate information.