Significance of Wording in your Survey Question

Nov 2
08:29

2016

Poll Deep

Poll Deep

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The wording of a question is extremely important. You may already know the questions you want to ask in your survey, but how you write your survey questions can be the difference between a good and a bad survey.

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Coming up with customer satisfaction survey questions seems easy,Significance of Wording in your Survey Question Articles right? You just decide on the things you want to know, jot down some survey questions and ask people to answer these questions.

The right marketing survey questions can be a very effective way to know what customers are searching for or how they would probably respond or react to a new product. However, you have to remember that the effectiveness of any survey completely depend on the accuracy of results you get. Experts have in fact found out that survey question wordings do have a very big impact on how people respond.

Acquiescence

A certain kind of response bias is acquiescence or yea-saying. There are survey questions being structured as a series of statements wherein respondents are asked to disagree or agree, like the usual thin-crust pizza is the best. There are some respondents who have the tendency to agree to all statements without carefully giving it a thought.

Market researches will try to limit the effects of acquiescence through including statements which contradict one another. Surveys about pizza crust might include the statement New York-style deep dish pizza is the most appealing of them all. When the same respondent agrees with the two statements, it is an evidence of acquiescence and such answers might be regarded as unreliable.

SDR

When survey question wordings suggest that one answer is going to be more acceptable to the society than another, some respondents could end up answering inaccurately. For instance, when a craft brewer conducts surveys regarding a proposed new beer product then asks is alcohol content or flavor more important to you, there are respondents who might feel embarrassed to say that they consider alcohol content as more important to them even if it really is.

This kind of response bias is referred to as SDR or socially desirable responding. The market researchers can reduce the effects of SDR through phrasing customer satisfaction survey questions in a more neutral way. Effects of SDR are actually much stronger in the case of in-person interviews.

Adjectives

Adjectives tend to affect how respondents give their answers. For example, harsh marketing survey questions like do you love greasy and heavy deep dish pizza may encourage a respondent who would actually love this kind of pizza to claim that they don’t. A phrasing like would you enjoy new gourmet pizza which comes topped with delicious Asiago cheese may encourage several respondents to say that they will be interested to try the product when in fact, they haven’t tasted Asiago cheese yet and they have no idea if they will like it or not.



Midpoint and Extreme Response

When a survey question includes statements like please rate the thin crust pizza on the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 meaning you like it very much and 1 meaning you don’t like it at all, there are respondents who will end up answering 1 to 5 to all this kind of questions, staying away from the moderate responses. This is known as extreme response bias. Several respondents are taking the opposite approach, answering questions of this kind with a rating of 3. It is known as midpoint response bias. Many market researchers get around these biases through asking questions with multiple choices or question with just two choices such as like and dislike.

Being a business owner you should understand, there's never too much of feedback, the more you have better it is for you. Today's business scenario is much more competitive and aggressive. You have to be on your toe every time to beat your competition. The online poll can help you out in this situation with its improved and comprehensive approach. Many online survey site are there on the internet like survey monkey, PollDeep, etc which will be helpful for business to conduct poll and make decision making a much more easier and comforting task.