Equally important to the questions asked is the format and general look of the questionnaire. A great layout will help encourage respondents to fully complete the questionnaire.
Questionnaire Title
The title of the questionnaire can be very important, particularly in cases where respondents need to be inspired to participate.
Introduction
Providing an introduction to a questionnaire isn’t mandatory however is good practice. Included in the introduction can be the name of the organization conducting the research, a quick explanation as to the questionnaires goal and if appropriate the degree of confidentiality that shall be afforded to the respondents who take part in the research.
Preliminary Questions
Where it’s possible to do so the first set of questions should be questions that are relevant to all respondents, simple to answer and yet are clearly vital and relevant to the topic of the questionnaire.
It will encourage respondents if the preliminary questions are considered straightforward to answer and related to everyone.
Order
Questions should be sensibly grouped, for instance if the questionnaire requests details in regards to the respondent, for instance their name, gender and age, then they should be grouped together.
If the questionnaire can be grouped into clear sections then it is good practice to title and if appropriate, introduce each section.
Numbering
It isn’t mandatory for an internet questionnaire to be numbered as generally speaking the respondent will be guided rather than be required to navigate through the questionnaire. Providing the web questionnaire supports skip logic and branching the respondents will not need to miss out questions that are not related to them as this shall be dealt with automatically by the questionnaire software.
Formatting
The question, sub-text and answer options should be formatted in such a way that they are each easily distinguishable. For instance the main question may be formatted as bold text, the sub-text a different colour and smaller font size and the answer options in regular text.
The answer options should be uniform and aligned.
Instructions
When the respondent is able to select multiple answer options or where a minimum and/or maximum number of choices are set then the sub-text should be used to notify the respondent that multiple selections are supported.
Page Breaks
Page breaks should occur before and never straight after any section headings and questions and answer options should not straddle page breaks. Notes and information that relate to certain questions should ideally appear on the same page.
Appropriate Field Sizes
Online questionnaires have the benefit that they can benefit from scrolling horizontal and vertical fields. Nevertheless, horizontal scrolling ought to be used sparingly as making the input field too small could make it difficult for the respondent to review their response.
Vertical scrolling can help make sure that the questionnaire design is aesthetically pleasing without any need for compromise. For example a comment field that’s 80 characters wide and 6 rows is sufficient space even if the respondent wanted to write considerably more than the display space available.
‘Other’ fields should never be used to ask follow up questions, if they are it can present problems when analysing the results.
Making Questions Mandatory
Making questions mandatory will ensure that respondents don’t accidently miss out questions. However, there are particular questions that should not be made obligatory such as when asking for additional comments.
When making questions mandatory it’s important that closed questions allow for all possible responses. The answer option ought to include a catch all ‘No answer’, ‘No Comment’, ‘Not Applicable’ type answer option so that a positive ‘no answer’ is obtained rather than forcing the respondent to answer inaccurately or making the question optional, and then not knowing if the question was ‘not applicable’ to the respondent or accidently missed out.
Thank You
At the end of the questionnaire the respondents ought to be thanked for their participation. If appropriate they should be provided with further information such as when and where the results of the questionnaire will be published and reassurances of confidentiality.
Follow-up/Follow-on
Where respondents are known the opportunity may exist to follow up on points raised by respondents.
With online questionnaires it is also possible to redirect the respondent to a particular web page, so for instance a questionnaire that may relate to a particular study may redirect respondents who have completed the questionnaire to a fundraising or further information website page.
The structure and layout of a questionnaire will help enhance the respondent experience. By allowing the questionnaire to flow, respondents will spend more time considering their responses and less time about navigating through the questionnaire.
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