Asking the right questions in quantitative surveys

Quantitative market research is almost always based on a structured questionnaire made up of yes/no questions, multiple choice questions, and open-ended questions. Besides ensuring that the questions are clear and comprehensive, close attention should be paid to the ordering of the questions:

• opening questions should be easy to answer and make the respondents feel at ease
• questions should be grouped in a logical order, leading naturally from one topic to another, without introducing any bias
• the format of the questions should be varied to reduce the risk of boredom (e.g. if there are a lot of multiple choice questions, consider breaking them up with a few open-ended questions)
• potentially sensitive questions (e.g. income level) should be left to the end

If there are multiple routes through the questionnaire (e.g. if the next question asked depends on the response to the previous question), then each route should be checked to ensure that the logical flow is maintained for all respondents.