5 Best Practices to Follow When Designing a Market Research Questionnaire

Posted on

Asking the right questions in your marketing questionnaire can lead to accurate data for business analysis. Here are five best practices that can help you design an effective questionnaire.

If you want to conduct an effective market research, you have to understand what goes behind building a questionnaire. Since marketing research requires primary data collection, it becomes important to use to questionnaire that can ensure the best possible collection of information.

A well-designed questionnaire should include two main objectives. It must be able to convert the information that you require into a format of questions. Next, the questions must be created in an easily understandable format, so that respondents will be willing to answer them. The questions should also be engaging, so that your respondents are not quickly disengaged with the process.

Here are some best practices that you can follow while designing your marketing questionnaire.

  1. Carefully select the method of interview

    The interviewing method, be it online, personal or telephone plays a crucial role in questionnaire design. For instance, in the situation of a personal interview, since you can interact with the person, complex questions can be asked and the person can go on to give you lengthy answers. With telephone interviews, it is not wise to ask lengthy and complex questions. It is best to keep the questions short and to the point. If you opt for an online survey, keep the questions simple, as online viewers usually try to tackle the questions on their own.

  2. Determine the composition of the question

    The next step while creating a marketing questionnaire is to evaluate what kind of questions you are going to ask. You can choose from open-ended or close-ended questions. If your research topic is unknown or fairly new, you can opt for open-ended questions. If you are conducting a survey, it would be best to choose close-ended questions, as they have a higher response rate and can be quickly analysed statistically.

  3. Evaluate the content of each individual question

    Each individual question is unique from its content perspective and therefore must be treated with caution in the development process. Using components such as, words, order, tenses and so on, each question attempts to fulfil the research overall objectives. One of the most important components of any question is words. Researchers have to be very clear in the choice of words which can easily be understood in the correct manner by respondents. If the researchers and respondents do not assign the same meaning to the used words, the response will be biased.

    Since each question in the questionnaire is unique from its content perspective, each question must be individually evaluated. Ask yourself “Is this question necessary?” “Does this research question fulfil my research objectives? “At times, it may be required to include more than one question on the same topic. For example, if you want to know about the monthly sales of a retailer, you would be better off asking him two questions like ” What is your most selling price range?” and “What is the average of your daily sales?”

  4. Think about the order, form and layout of your questions

    A marketing questionnaire with an unclear order, format and layout will usually get a very low response rate. You must keep in mind the order, format and layout of each of your questions as they can have significant impact on the result. Your questionnaire should include opening questions, generic information questions and specific information questions. To gain the trust of your respondents and make them feel comfortable, you must include a few opening questions that are interesting. Opening questions that ask for the opinion of the respondent is also a great way to begin the questionnaire.

    All demographic and socioeconomic questions like income group, gender, family size, age, name, address, other contact information fall under generic questions. Information directly associated with the research is known as specific information questions.

    This type of questions should be asked later in the questionnaire after building a good rapport with the respondent.

  5. Always pilot test the questionnaire

    Remember to dadequately pilot test the questionnaire. All the aspect of the questionnaire should be tested, be it order, content, layout, form or wording. The sample respondents should be similar to those who are to be included in the actual marketing questionnaire survey, in terms of their attitude, interests, familiarity with the topic and their background characteristics. A group of 10 to 20 sample respondents would be ideal for the pilot test.

If you are looking for marketing questionnaire design services, then look no further than Outsource2india. Whether you require a questionnaire for academic research, business research or advanced analysis, we can assist you with from start to finish. Find out more about marketing questionnaire design services.

Did you find these tips useful? If yes, let us know in the comments below. We, at Outsource2india love to hear from you!

Interested to know more?

The following two tabs change content below.

Editor

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*


+ three = eleven