Best Practices for Formulating Effective Questions

Crafting an Effective Questionnaire

The questionnaire is your tool for listening to your consumers. To design an effective questionnaire, it’s essential to establish the correct order of questions. We recommend the following approach:

1. Sort Questions into Blocks: Group related questions into blocks for logical organization.
2. From Broad to Specific: Within each block, order the questions from the broadest to the most specific.
3. From General to Specific: Apply the same ordering principle to the blocks themselves.

Practical Examples

Let’s explore how to apply this approach in different research scenarios:

1. Brand Health Research:

• Category
• Brand Set Evaluation
• Brand-Specific Questions

2. Innovation Studies (Concept Test or Advertising Pre-Test):

• Generic Questions (e.g., brand preferences)
• Concept Evaluation (e.g., overall likes, dislikes, relevance, credibility)
• Purchase Intent (without price, then with price)

3. Multi-Stimulus Evaluation:

• Individual Ratings of Each Product
• Preference Questions (after individual ratings)**

Enhancing Questionnaire Flexibility

Open Questions and Video Answers

In certain situations, you may consider adding more flexibility to your questionnaire:

• Open Questions* Use these when you are less familiar with a category or market or want to avoid bias from a predefined list of answers.
• Video Answers: Request some interviewees to provide video responses, offering richer insights from end consumers.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining us in this capsule on best practices for formulating effective questions in your questionnaire. In our next session, we’ll delve into the characteristics of results tables and how to interpret them.