Survey Opening Question Tone

How you design you survey – including the order of the questions, the physical layout, etc. – all affects how the survey is received and completed by your sample. Small changes can have surprisingly large effects, especially over a large sample where persistent effects could drastically alter the data, which is why every word of your survey needs to be designed to give you the most accurate results. This also means that the first few questions of your survey may be especially important.

Researchers believe that the first few questions set the time for the entire survey. If your questions are extremely difficult or written in a manner that reads “harsh,” the rest of your survey may be seen through that same lens. So it is often recommended that you make the first few questions “easy questions” as a way to quickly break the respondent into the survey and get them going on the rest of it.

In general, starting your survey off with easy, friendly questions has a number of benefits, which is why it is the preferred option for most researchers. Some of these benefits include: Building Rapport When your survey starts off simple and friendly, you are able to build rapport and trust with the respondent. You need your respondent to be comfortable if you hope to get accurate answers, because a respondent that is frustrated or on guard the entire survey may alter their answers to match that current emotion.

Easy Survey Lens If the respondent believes that the survey is likely going to be easy to complete, they should be more likely to finish it. Your response rate may depend on their belief that your survey will not take them very much time or cause them too much emotional stress. Additional Trust For any survey that asks for any personal information, you will also want to make sure that the survey doesn’t scare them into thinking you are going to use that information for some sort of bias or advantage over them.

Once they’ve already been answering questions, however, they are far more likely to be at ease. Still, while asking easy questions to start a survey is beneficial – and by far the most preferred method by survey researchers – it’s important to note that there are some issues that may arise from this approach. These will be discussed in the next article.