The purpose of asking questions is to collect data that we can take action on later: i.e., “actionable” data. We also use data to confirm or disconfirm our guesses about things (hypotheses). We hope that the data we collect through our questions are reliable, meaningful, repeatable (if we ask the same person the same question later, we’ll get the same response), and reproducible (if we repeat the study with a similar sample, we will get similar results).
In marketing research, we ask questions to understand concepts such as attitudes, motivations, opinions, preferences, loyalty, and intentions.
Questions need to be clearly written. People are easily confused by unclear language. They will give you bogus answers, or abandon your survey altogether, if they don’t understand what you are asking. Provide clear instructions. Test the questions on people in the target audience (pilot).
Here are some sample questions about a webinar, moving from general to specific, ending with classification questions.
What did you like about the webinar? _______________________________________
What did you dislike about the webinar? _____________________________________
Overall, how would you rate the webinar?
- Excellent
- Very good
- Good
- Fair
- Poor
How likely would you be to recommend the webinar to a friend or associate?
- Very likely
- Somewhat likely
- Neither likely nor unlikely
- Somewhat unlikely
- Very unlikely
What suggestions for improvement do you have? ________________________
On a scale of 1-5, where 1 is poor and 5 is excellent, how would you rate these particular features in the webinar?
- The presenter
- The topic
- The pace of the webinar
- The length
How relevant was the webinar to you?
- Very relevant
- Somewhat relevant
- Neither relevant nor unrelevant
- Somewhat unrelevant
- Very unrelevant
Demographic questions (for classification purposes)
- What is your age?
- What is your gender?
- What is your annual household income?
- What is your occupation?
- What is your marital status?
- What is your race/ethnicity?