Thiscovery offers all the tools you might need to create accessible and interesting online questionnaires. But it's helpful to know some points to follow to make sure you're giving your questionnaire the best possible chance of success.

In this article, our Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Jenni Burt - has provided some practical and simple advice for making great online questionnaires.

Did you mean survey?

We’re talking about questionnaires rather than surveys in this post. That’s deliberate because they mean slightly different things.

• A survey encompasses your entire methodological approach - what your project looks like from beginning to end (including who you want to include, how many of those people, how you will contact them, your approach to data analysis, and so on).
• A questionnaire is one specific part of a survey project (obviously a rather important one, but not the only part). It’s the things you will ask people.

1. Set a clear aim upfront

Technically this relates to your overall survey but it is absolutely fundamental so we’re including it here.

Before you do anything for your survey, including thinking about your questionnaire, you need to be absolutely clear on the aim of your project.

Ask yourself this: “what are you hoping to achieve through this work?” That’s your guiding star to follow.

"Everything you do must help you answer your fundamental question. And anything irrelevant doesn’t go into your questionnaire."
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

2. Keep your audience front-of-mind

Who are the people who will be answering your questions? What matters to them? What will their experience be with your questionnaire? Will your language make sense? (And never use jargon or complex language, whoever they are).

Don’t ask questions you don’t need answered. It’s tempting to throw in some points which might be helpful for future research - you’ve got access to this audience, after all. But you risk reducing the success of your questionnaire by doing it.

"You need to minimise the burden on your respondents so you can keep them with you. That means keeping things as short and clear as possible."
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

3. Don't jump into writing questions

Your life will be easier and your results more helpful if you do some planning before starting to write your questionnaire.

Start with a conceptual framework (which means thinking through the key topics relevant to your research which you’ll need to ask about). Try a quick mindmap to get going - what are the concepts this questionnaire needs to cover, and from those concepts what variables should you ask about?

An example: you want to hear about people’s experiences of visiting a clinic. So you could start by visualising the whole patient journey and explore all the variables within that: their transport to the hospital, finding their way to the right room, what was reception like, could they find a toilet while they were waiting etc.

"Remember that you’re asking people about themselves - their real lives, not a hypothesis. The helpful thing is that you’re a person too. So put yourself in their shoes."
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

4. Don't reinvent the wheel

Are there any existing questionnaires already out there which you can re-use? If someone else has put time and thought into preparing relevant questions, make the most of their work.

The UK Data Service provides a variable and question bank which contains some useful starting points. And depending on your overall survey focus there might be other questionnaires previously used which you can draw upon.

Exhaust those other options first, and then you can finally get going on writing your own questions. There is lots of helpful guidance out there on how to write great questions, and we’ll have our own for you very soon - watch this space!

"You’ll always have to come up with some questions yourself, but often most of the hard work will have already been done for you.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

5. Know what you'll do with your data

Data analysis always needs some planning. If you’re going to ask a question, think about how you’ll use the answers you’ll get.

If your analysis will include age groups, then include those age groups in a question. But if instead you need the average age of your participants, then ask them for their date of birth. A useful tool for you here is a question analysis table - for your questions, plot out your planned response formats, so you can check across all of them that they will give you what you need for your analysis.

"Set out a brief overview or plan for each variable. This will help you only ask the questions you need, and in formats to get data you’ll be able to use.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

6. Make it engaging

Remember that not everyone will find your questionnaire as fascinating as you do.

Can you make it fun, memorable, or at least very accessible? (Thiscovery can help here). You’ll get a much better completion rate.

"Be friendly and interesting! Humanising your questionnaire’s ‘voice’ and avoiding jargon will result in better quality data.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

7. Make the most of technology

The joy of an online questionnaire is that while it should seem straightforward to the person answering it, you can build very bespoke routes according to who they are. Thiscovery will let you feed different questions to different groups, bring in answers from previous sections, provide summaries of specific group opinions, and much more.

Take the time to build a questionnaire which feels seamless to the user while maximising the tools available so they have a really rich online experience.

"Keep it simple as far as the user is concerned, but embrace complexity in how you set it up.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

8. Do pre-testing

You’ve done all your planning, you’ve written the questionnaire, you’ve built a really nifty online version. You’re ready to go, right?

Almost. You might think you’ve covered every angle, but you know your project inside-out. You need to hear how other real people will interpret your questions and get their feedback on what makes sense and what doesn't. Then you can fix any issues before they’re a problem.

Pre-testing isn't the same as piloting (which is sending out your questionnaire to a small sub-sample of your real audiences). Doing both is ideal, but if that’s not possible then always do pre-testing.

"I can't emphasise enough how important pre-testing is. Even if you can’t do it with someone from your audience, do it with anyone - even your housemates or a friend over a coffee.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

9. Don't overthink it

At Thiscovery we’re here to help people be practical and effective in their surveys. All of the above points are important, but so is being sensible about the time and energy you have available to dedicate to this work.

Get your questionnaire to the best level that you can with the tools available to you, and then you can focus on the exciting part - getting it in front of the right people and seeing what they tell you.

"A good questionnaire which you get out to the right people is infinitely better than an immaculate one which never sees the light of day.”
Jenni Burt, Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer - Thiscovery

Talk to us if you’d like to find out how we can help you with your next piece of audience-focused research. And lots of luck to you with your next online questionnaire!