Designing Unbiased Survey Questions
The aim of any survey is to accurately capture a participant’s true sentiments. If the questions on the survey are worded wrongly, the participant may give you answers that are not very accurate. Biased questions could skew the responses of participants and lead to inaccurate data collection.
What is a Biased Question?
A biased question contains words that could unconsciously steer the participant towards a more positive or negative response. Let’s take a look at a few biased questions to understand how they skew responses.
• How much did you enjoy taking an online survey?
• How satisfied are you with the rewards being offered?
• Recent research suggests a large number of people are concerned about their privacy online. What do you feel about it?
The first two questions steer the participants towards a more favourable response because of the words ‘enjoy’ and ‘satisfied’ while the third question draws a negative response out of the participant because of the added information given.
How to Design Unbiased Questions?
Instead of using leading words in your questions, ask participants to rate their experiences on a scale of 1-5. Create questions with multiple choice answers or ask participants how strongly they agree with something by asking them for ratings. When giving them a set of multiple choice answers make sure you list all possible responses so that they don’t give you the next best answer to the question. Also make sure you clearly define ranges and avoid any overlaps for better clarity. For instance instead of listing ‘2-3 times a week’ followed by ‘3-4 times a week’, opt for ‘2-3 times a week’ followed by ‘4-5 times a week’.
If you want to gather new information or ideas from the participants, you will have to ask open-ended questions that will allow them to offer answers in their own words. An example of an open question could be ‘What do you like most about online surveys for cash?’
Before you conduct a paid online survey, do a test-run on a group of people to make sure your questionnaire captures the information you’re after.
More Tips For Creating An Online Paid Survey
Short surveys are better because they hold the participant’s attention which in turn helps them select accurate responses. The questions you create should be easily understood by participants. Irrelevant questions and answers should be taken off the survey and questions that fall under a specific category should be grouped together. Participants should also be able to easily pick answers from the multiple choice responses they receive.
MyOpinions.com is one of Australia’s leading paid survey providers. We take your traits and demographics into account before inviting you to complete panels and we reward you for your time by offering you gift cards, e-vouchers and cash payments.
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