Writing good survey question

To get the most out of your survey, you will need good questions. First, we'll go through general tips, and then we'll look at single and multiple choice questions and text answers individually.

General tips

Before you even start writing down questions, you need to decide What is the purpose of this survey?. This is important, because unless you know why you are asking questions and what you are going to use them for, you won't know which questions are relevant. Once you have your purpose, it's time to start sketching your survey.

For some, writing down all the possibly relevant questions you can think of is a good start, before you combine questions that are close to each other, and remove questions that perhaps weren't that relevant after all.

Whatever your method is, here are some useful tips when creating survey questions. Let's start with the questions themselves:

Avoid yes-no questions. They aren't bad, and in some cases useful, but other types of questions can give more information on the same topic.
Only ask about one thing. Although it may be tempting sometimes, never ask about two things in the same question. If you want to know two things, ask two questions.
Don't ask too similar questions. Your respondents have a limited attention span, use it wisely.
Don't ask leading questions. A leading question is when you suggest what you want the respondents to answer or think. Allow for all opinions, or they may not feel they can be honest. For example, ask "What did you think of our website?" instead of "What did you think of our awesome website?".
Don't use internal terms or company specific language. Just because questions make sense to you or your colleagues, you may use a different language than your respondents do. Adapt to the respondents instead of forcing them to adapt to you.
Always use a balanced scale. If you ask the respondents to rate something, there should be as many positive as negative options, with approximately equal distance between them.
Limit the use of text answers. Although text answers can give great information, respondents have less patience for web surveys, and are therefore less willing to spend time answering them. Text answers require thought and time, and you should therefore limit them to not discourage the respondents.

And now the structure of the survey, or its entirety:

Start with the most important questions. Respondents will often leave before answering all required questions, but we save all answers. Even so, help them answer the most important ones by placing them at the beginning.
Ask the questions in a logical order. This will make the survey easier to answer for the respondent, but it will also show that you put some effort into creating the survey.
Start with the general. A tip for a logical order of the questions is to start with the more general questions before asking more and more specific questions.
Don't use a leading order. Just like how you phrase a question can influence the respondents, the order of the questions can influence how they answer. Asking specific questions about, for example, your product pages before a general question about all the information on the website can make the respondents still answer about the product pages only.
Keep the survey short. Respondents attention span is extra short for web surveys. If you have a long survey, the respondents will leave halfway through. Or even sooner.
Ask the personal questions last. Some respondents find them intrusive, others will have left the survey already. As these are usually less important, they can be asked last.

Single and multiple choice questions

Here are some tips for single and multiple choice questions specifically:

Allow for a way out. For most single or multiple choice question, you won't be able to list all relevant options. Therefore, allow respondents to opt out by adding options such as "Other" or "Not sure".
Favor single choice questions. Multiple choice questions have their advantages, but they are more difficult to analyze. To make it easier for you and your colleagues, use single choice questions as much as possible.
Phrase the question according to the type of question. For example, ask for main purpose when using a single choice question. This will indicate you only want one answer.

Text answers

And lastly some tips for text answers:

Never ask yes-no questions. If that is the answer you want, use a single choice question instead.
Begin your questions with "What", "How" or "Why". These are good words to make respondents give longer answers.
Leave text answers optional. Respondents usually don't like spending the time is takes to write text answers. Having those questions as required will therefore mostly annoy the respondents and is not a guarantee for getting more answers. More likely, you'll instead just get answers such as "." or "n/a" or "sodjgnwg" and so on.

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