Designing Quality Survey Questions

Surveys are a cornerstone of social and behavioral research, and with the use of web-based tools, surveys have become an easy and inexpensive means of gathering data. But how researchers ask a question can dramatically influence the answers they receive. 

Designing Quality Survey Questions shows readers how to craft high quality, precisely-worded survey questions that will elicit rich, nuanced, and ultimately useful data to help answer their research or evaluation questions. The authors address challenges such as language preferences for standard demographic questions (e.g. How to ask about gender), creative question design to keep respondents engaged and avoid survey fatigue, web-based survey formats, culturally-responsive survey design, and factors that influence survey responses (memory, social desirability, etc.). Numerous examples of questions illustrate each identified principle of question construction. 

Sheila B. Robinson, Ed.D is an educator, program evaluator, and professional development workshop facilitator whose survey design experience began with assessment design in K12 public education. She is often an invited keynote speaker and workshop presenter at professional conferences, consultant with educational and other organizations on survey design and program evaluation, and adjunct professor of graduate courses in both program evaluation and professional development design and evaluation. Sheila is an active member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA); she is past chair of AEA’s Pre-K12 Educational Evaluation Topical Interest Group, Lead Curator for AEA’s blog Tip-a-Day-by and For Evaluators, and Coordinator of AEA’s Potent Presentations Initiative. Sheila and her husband live in Rochester, NY.

Kimberly Firth Leonard, MPA, has built, administered, and taught others about surveys for more than a decade, primarily in the context of program evaluation. Kim is currently the Senior Evaluation Officer at the Oregon Community Foundation where she manages evaluations of several large grant-making initiatives, each of which includes at least one survey-based data collection component. Kim is an active member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and was president of the Oregon Program Evaluators Network in 2013. Kim lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, their new baby girl, two dogs and cat.