Helpful Market Research Questionnaire Design Tips

Planning to do some market research for a client or company project but need help with the questionnaire design and flow?  Here are a few tips to help you structure your questionnaire.

Helpful Market Research Questionnaire Design Tips:

Criteria for a Good Questionnaire

• Provide decision-making information


• Consider the respondent


• Meeting editing & coding requirement

The Questionnaire Design Process

1. Determine Survey Objectives, Resources, and Contraints


2. Determine the Data Collection Method


3. Determine the Questions Response Format


4. Decide on the Question Wording


5. Establish Questionnaire Flow and Layout


6. Evaluate the Questionnaire


7. Obtain Approval of all Relevant Parties


8. Pretest and Revise the Questionnaire


9. Prepare the Final Copy


10. Implement the Survey

Questionnaire Do’s

• Be Brief


• Use simple grammar


• Be focused on a single issue or topic


• Use the respondent’s level of vocabulary


• Use plenty of white space between the questions


• Number the questions


• Questions should be interpreted equally by respondents

Questionnaire Do Not’s

• Biasing the respondent


• Using loaded or leading phrasing


• Using double-barreled questions


• Being beyond the respondent’s ability to answer


• Being beyond the respondent’s willingness to answer

Questionnaire Flow

Screeners – Qualifying Questions

• Ask General questions first – establish respondent “buy-in”


• Basic questions that lay the groundwork for upcoming questions

Warm-ups – First Few Questions

• Gets the respondent thinking about the topic at hand


• Basic parameters about the respondents’ attitudes, behavior, etc.

Transitions – First Third of the Questions

• Questions that set the tone for the more difficult questions to come

Complicated – Second Third of the Questions

• Use of rating scales for attributes, attitudes, beliefs, opinion, etc

Classification – Last Third of the Questions

• Personal & demographic type questions

(Information taking from Marketing Research Power Points used in MKTG 470.5 Mead, E. McDaniel & Gates: Marketing Research)

Example: (Click to images to view)

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Hopefully these market research questionnaire design tips helped you in your questionnaire structure process.

Once you have finalized your questionnaire design and ready to print, Top Commercial Print provides fast turnaround for all printing services.