{"id":862,"date":"2009-11-04T08:57:26","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T22:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=862"},"modified":"2009-10-29T09:22:04","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T23:22:04","slug":"give-options-that-make-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/11\/give-options-that-make-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Give options that make sense"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have written before about the need to use clear questions in surveys<\/a>\u00a0to get meaningful results, and given some tips on how to write such questions<\/a>. Every time I do a survey with poor questions I cringe – do they really not care about getting good results or just don’t understand that not everyone knows what they are really asking?<\/p>\n

One of the most common questions I have seen in online surveys is the following:<\/p>\n

Are you …<\/p>\n

male
\nfemale?<\/p>\n

Technically, the answer is yes\u00a0 – I am male or female and so is every other human I know of! Fairly pointless question to ask unless you have a third group responding.<\/p>\n

In this case, we can see what is really being asked (“which are you?”) and the available answers lead us to answering correctly, but it isn’t always so easy.<\/p>\n

It was great recently to be asked to help a major research centre refine their questionnaire. They had determined the questions they wanted to ask but understood that how they asked was critical to the final result of their research.<\/p>\n

So if you are preparing surveys or questionnaires,\u00a0my two key tips are:<\/p>\n