How to Create a Survey – Building Survey Structure, Sequence and Style

When creating a survey, the structure and flow of topics, sequencing of questions, and the writing style are very important… and can be used by the researcher to make the questionnaire friendlier to the respondent.

Questionnaire Structure using what is called the "funnel" technique. Start with broad, general interest questions that are easy for the respondent to answer. These questions serve to warm up the respondent and get them involved in the survey. In the middle, place the most difficult questions, those that take time to think about, and those that are of less general interest. At the end, we again place general questions that are easier to answer and of broad interest and application. Typically, these last questions include demographic and other classification questions.

When building a survey that needs to be a “little more interesting”, you might try inserting "ringer or throw away" questions to increase interest and willingness to respond. These questions are about hot topics of the day and often have little to do with the survey. While these questions will definitely spice up a boring survey, they require valuable space that could be devoted to the main topic of interest. Use this type of question with caution.

            Keep Your Survey Short. Questionnaires should be kept short and to the point. Most long surveys are not completed. A quick look at a survey containing page after page of boring questions produces a response of "there is no way I'm going to complete this thing". If a questionnaire is long, the person must either be very interested in the topic, a true bleeding heart, an employee, or paid for their time. Internet surveys have some advantage because the respondent will often not see all of the survey at once. However if your survey sends them to page after page of questions, your response rate will drop off dramatically.

            How long is too long? The general rule of thumb is to keep the survey short, typically less than five to ten minutes.  At six questions per minute, and depending on the question difficulty, you are limited to about 30-40 questions. When building a survey, remember that one open end text question counts for three multiple choice questions, depending of course on the difficulty of the question. While only a rule of thumb, this formula will accurately predict the limits of your survey.

Question Sequence When Building A Survey
Branching allows respondents that respond differently to questions to be routed to another sequence of questions.

For example, a patron of a restaurant may be asked about the overall quality of service received during their visit. If they respond that they were "very or extremely satisfied", we would want to branch to ask the question "What was it about this visit that made it so enjoyable to you?" However, if they indicated that the visit was less than satisfactory, we would want to ask the question "What could have been done to make your visit more enjoyable?"

Branching is accomplished using Boolean logic statements of the form:

If (question # ) (state condition:   <,  = , >,  <=,  >=, not equal) (value), then (action: skip forward to the target question )
For example, If the answer on question 3 equals 1, then skip to question 5, Otherwise continue to question 4.

Survey branching must be carefully charted out. For simplicity, make sure all of your questions are in their final order before the branching pattern is implemented. It is best to flowchart questions and order questions so that you can visually see where your branching occurs and so that you will avoid logic and branching errors.

Question Sequence and Branching:

Conditional Branching occurs only if the condition is met. An example of conditional branching is the statement:
"If the answer to question (3) is greater than 2, then Branch to Question (5)"

      Compound Conditional Branching (compound branching means that branching is based on multiple answers, i.e., if question 3 is greater than 2 and question 1 is greater than 1). This option can be specified as a single instruction, or can be developed through multiple questions are included in the instruction set that defines the branching operations.

A branching example using a series of simple conditional branches might appear as follows: 

"Branch to Question (5) only if: " the answer to Question (3) is, as specified by the relational operator, greater than or equal to (4)"
AND a previous question had a separate branch instruction that directed the respondent to Question 5

Unconditional Branching occurs as a direct statement with no conditions. For example, "Branch to question 5" is an unconditional statement. Unconditional statements can be inserted for text questions or at the end of a branch path to bring the respondent to a specific point in the main survey.

Unconditional branching is the simplest form of branching, but can be used as a conditional branch if implemented correctly. To accomplish this, use unconditional branches for each answer of each question. As example, we might want to skip to question 15 if the respondent is a renter, but answer question 14 for owners.

            Caveats about Building Branching Surveys: Branching creates what are called "Opportunities for Disruption" meaning that the respondent often justifies discontinuing of the survey when a whole new page of questions appears. One recent study resulted in a 25% respondent discontinuation when the survey branched to a page with a large number of questions on it. Respondent termination occurs most often when the survey task continues beyond a reasonable time, number of pages, questions, or when they are not committed to the survey (or group sponsoring the survey).   

Writing Style: Simplicity is the best rule.  Decrease the level of sophistication in my survey writing to a “9-11th grade level" and speak to the audience you are targeting.  Don't use big words, use simple sentences and simple choices for the answers. You may even want to think about adjusting the language to meet the audience.  One survey of 9^th-12^th grade high school students used a question that read  “Good. Now we want to know some stuff about your high school…. Is your high school…”  While this is not the best “king’s” English, high school students know a lot about “stuff” and the question places them at ease, they like the question.