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Questionnaire Design | Methods, Question Types & Examples

Published on July 15, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

A questionnaire is a list of questions or items used to gather data from respondents about their attitudes, experiences, or opinions. Questionnaires can be used to collect quantitative and/or qualitative information.

Questionnaires are commonly used in market research as well as in the social and health sciences. For example, a company may ask for feedback about a recent customer service experience, or psychology researchers may investigate health risk perceptions using questionnaires.

Table of contents

Questionnaires vs. surveys, questionnaire methods, open-ended vs. closed-ended questions, question wording, question order, step-by-step guide to design, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about questionnaire design.

A survey is a research method where you collect and analyze data from a group of people. A questionnaire is a specific tool or instrument for collecting the data.

Designing a questionnaire means creating valid and reliable questions that address your research objectives , placing them in a useful order, and selecting an appropriate method for administration.

But designing a questionnaire is only one component of survey research. Survey research also involves defining the population you’re interested in, choosing an appropriate sampling method , administering questionnaires, data cleansing and analysis, and interpretation.

Sampling is important in survey research because you’ll often aim to generalize your results to the population. Gather data from a sample that represents the range of views in the population for externally valid results. There will always be some differences between the population and the sample, but minimizing these will help you avoid several types of research bias , including sampling bias , ascertainment bias , and undercoverage bias .

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Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered . Self-administered questionnaires are more common because they are easy to implement and inexpensive, but researcher-administered questionnaires allow deeper insights.

Self-administered questionnaires

Self-administered questionnaires can be delivered online or in paper-and-pen formats, in person or through mail. All questions are standardized so that all respondents receive the same questions with identical wording.

Self-administered questionnaires can be:

• cost-effective
• easy to administer for small and large groups
• anonymous and suitable for sensitive topics

But they may also be:

• unsuitable for people with limited literacy or verbal skills
• susceptible to a nonresponse bias (most people invited may not complete the questionnaire)
• biased towards people who volunteer because impersonal survey requests often go ignored.

Researcher-administered questionnaires

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in-person, or online between researchers and respondents.

Researcher-administered questionnaires can:

• help you ensure the respondents are representative of your target audience
• allow clarifications of ambiguous or unclear questions and answers
• have high response rates because it’s harder to refuse an interview when personal attention is given to respondents

But researcher-administered questionnaires can be limiting in terms of resources. They are:

• costly and time-consuming to perform
• more difficult to analyze if you have qualitative responses
• likely to contain experimenter bias or demand characteristics
• likely to encourage social desirability bias in responses because of a lack of anonymity

Your questionnaire can include open-ended or closed-ended questions or a combination of both.

Using closed-ended questions limits your responses, while open-ended questions enable a broad range of answers. You’ll need to balance these considerations with your available time and resources.

Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. Closed-ended questions are best for collecting data on categorical or quantitative variables.

Categorical variables can be nominal or ordinal. Quantitative variables can be interval or ratio. Understanding the type of variable and level of measurement means you can perform appropriate statistical analyses for generalizable results.

Examples of closed-ended questions for different variables

Nominal variables include categories that can’t be ranked, such as race or ethnicity. This includes binary or dichotomous categories.

It’s best to include categories that cover all possible answers and are mutually exclusive. There should be no overlap between response items.

In binary or dichotomous questions, you’ll give respondents only two options to choose from.

White Black or African American American Indian or Alaska Native Asian Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

Ordinal variables include categories that can be ranked. Consider how wide or narrow a range you’ll include in your response items, and their relevance to your respondents.

Likert scale questions collect ordinal data using rating scales with 5 or 7 points.

When you have four or more Likert-type questions, you can treat the composite data as quantitative data on an interval scale . Intelligence tests, psychological scales, and personality inventories use multiple Likert-type questions to collect interval data.

With interval or ratio scales , you can apply strong statistical hypothesis tests to address your research aims.

Pros and cons of closed-ended questions

Well-designed closed-ended questions are easy to understand and can be answered quickly. However, you might still miss important answers that are relevant to respondents. An incomplete set of response items may force some respondents to pick the closest alternative to their true answer. These types of questions may also miss out on valuable detail.

To solve these problems, you can make questions partially closed-ended, and include an open-ended option where respondents can fill in their own answer.

Open-ended questions

Open-ended, or long-form, questions allow respondents to give answers in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered. For example, respondents may want to answer “multiracial” for the question on race rather than selecting from a restricted list.

• How do you feel about open science?
• How would you describe your personality?
• In your opinion, what is the biggest obstacle for productivity in remote work?

Open-ended questions have a few downsides.

They require more time and effort from respondents, which may deter them from completing the questionnaire.

For researchers, understanding and summarizing responses to these questions can take a lot of time and resources. You’ll need to develop a systematic coding scheme to categorize answers, and you may also need to involve other researchers in data analysis for high reliability .

Question wording can influence your respondents’ answers, especially if the language is unclear, ambiguous, or biased. Good questions need to be understood by all respondents in the same way ( reliable ) and measure exactly what you’re interested in ( valid ).

Use clear language

You should design questions with your target audience in mind. Consider their familiarity with your questionnaire topics and language and tailor your questions to them.

For readability and clarity, avoid jargon or overly complex language. Don’t use double negatives because they can be harder to understand.

Use balanced framing

Respondents often answer in different ways depending on the question framing. Positive frames are interpreted as more neutral than negative frames and may encourage more socially desirable answers.

Use a mix of both positive and negative frames to avoid research bias , and ensure that your question wording is balanced wherever possible.

Unbalanced questions focus on only one side of an argument. Respondents may be less likely to oppose the question if it is framed in a particular direction. It’s best practice to provide a counter argument within the question as well.

Avoid leading questions

Leading questions guide respondents towards answering in specific ways, even if that’s not how they truly feel, by explicitly or implicitly providing them with extra information.

It’s best to keep your questions short and specific to your topic of interest.

• The average daily work commute in the US takes 54.2 minutes and costs $29 per day. Since 2020, working from home has saved many employees time and money. Do you favor flexible work-from-home policies even after it’s safe to return to offices?
• Experts agree that a well-balanced diet provides sufficient vitamins and minerals, and multivitamins and supplements are not necessary or effective. Do you agree or disagree that multivitamins are helpful for balanced nutrition?

Keep your questions focused

Ask about only one idea at a time and avoid double-barreled questions. Double-barreled questions ask about more than one item at a time, which can confuse respondents.

This question could be difficult to answer for respondents who feel strongly about the right to clean drinking water but not high-speed internet. They might only answer about the topic they feel passionate about or provide a neutral answer instead – but neither of these options capture their true answers.

Instead, you should ask two separate questions to gauge respondents’ opinions.

Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree

Do you agree or disagree that the government should be responsible for providing high-speed internet to everyone?

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You can organize the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex. Alternatively, you can randomize the question order between respondents.

Logical flow

Using a logical flow to your question order means starting with simple questions, such as behavioral or opinion questions, and ending with more complex, sensitive, or controversial questions.

The question order that you use can significantly affect the responses by priming them in specific directions. Question order effects, or context effects, occur when earlier questions influence the responses to later questions, reducing the validity of your questionnaire.

While demographic questions are usually unaffected by order effects, questions about opinions and attitudes are more susceptible to them.

• How knowledgeable are you about Joe Biden’s executive orders in his first 100 days?
• Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Joe Biden is managing the economy?
• Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president?

It’s important to minimize order effects because they can be a source of systematic error or bias in your study.

Randomization

Randomization involves presenting individual respondents with the same questionnaire but with different question orders.

When you use randomization, order effects will be minimized in your dataset. But a randomized order may also make it harder for respondents to process your questionnaire. Some questions may need more cognitive effort, while others are easier to answer, so a random order could require more time or mental capacity for respondents to switch between questions.

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

The first step of designing a questionnaire is determining your aims.

• What topics or experiences are you studying?
• What specifically do you want to find out?
• Is a self-report questionnaire an appropriate tool for investigating this topic?

Once you’ve specified your research aims, you can operationalize your variables of interest into questionnaire items. Operationalizing concepts means turning them from abstract ideas into concrete measurements. Every question needs to address a defined need and have a clear purpose.

Step 2: Use questions that are suitable for your sample

Create appropriate questions by taking the perspective of your respondents. Consider their language proficiency and available time and energy when designing your questionnaire.

• Are the respondents familiar with the language and terms used in your questions?
• Would any of the questions insult, confuse, or embarrass them?
• Do the response items for any closed-ended questions capture all possible answers?
• Are the response items mutually exclusive?
• Do the respondents have time to respond to open-ended questions?

Consider all possible options for responses to closed-ended questions. From a respondent’s perspective, a lack of response options reflecting their point of view or true answer may make them feel alienated or excluded. In turn, they’ll become disengaged or inattentive to the rest of the questionnaire.

Step 3: Decide on your questionnaire length and question order

Once you have your questions, make sure that the length and order of your questions are appropriate for your sample.

If respondents are not being incentivized or compensated, keep your questionnaire short and easy to answer. Otherwise, your sample may be biased with only highly motivated respondents completing the questionnaire.

Decide on your question order based on your aims and resources. Use a logical flow if your respondents have limited time or if you cannot randomize questions. Randomizing questions helps you avoid bias, but it can take more complex statistical analysis to interpret your data.

Step 4: Pretest your questionnaire

When you have a complete list of questions, you’ll need to pretest it to make sure what you’re asking is always clear and unambiguous. Pretesting helps you catch any errors or points of confusion before performing your study.

Ask friends, classmates, or members of your target audience to complete your questionnaire using the same method you’ll use for your research. Find out if any questions were particularly difficult to answer or if the directions were unclear or inconsistent, and make changes as necessary.

If you have the resources, running a pilot study will help you test the validity and reliability of your questionnaire. A pilot study is a practice run of the full study, and it includes sampling, data collection , and analysis. You can find out whether your procedures are unfeasible or susceptible to bias and make changes in time, but you can’t test a hypothesis with this type of study because it’s usually statistically underpowered .

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Student’s  t -distribution
• Normal distribution
• Null and Alternative Hypotheses
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Data cleansing
• Reproducibility vs Replicability
• Peer review
• Prospective cohort study

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Placebo effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Hindsight bias
• Affect heuristic
• Social desirability bias

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analyzing data from people using questionnaires.

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. These questions are easier to answer quickly.

Open-ended or long-form questions allow respondents to answer in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. It is made up of 4 or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with 5 or 7 possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

You can organize the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex, or randomly between respondents. A logical flow helps respondents process the questionnaire easier and quicker, but it may lead to bias. Randomization can minimize the bias from order effects.

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered.

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in-person, or online between researchers and respondents. You can gain deeper insights by clarifying questions for respondents or asking follow-up questions.

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How to Design Effective Research Questionnaires for Robust Findings

As a staple in data collection, questionnaires help uncover robust and reliable findings that can transform industries, shape policies, and revolutionize understanding. Whether you are exploring societal trends or delving into scientific phenomena, the effectiveness of your research questionnaire can make or break your findings.

In this article, we aim to understand the core purpose of questionnaires, exploring how they serve as essential tools for gathering systematic data, both qualitative and quantitative, from diverse respondents. Read on as we explore the key elements that make up a winning questionnaire, the art of framing questions which are both compelling and rigorous, and the careful balance between simplicity and depth.

Table of Contents

The Role of Questionnaires in Research

So, what is a questionnaire? A questionnaire is a structured set of questions designed to collect information, opinions, attitudes, or behaviors from respondents. It is one of the most commonly used data collection methods in research. Moreover, questionnaires can be used in various research fields, including social sciences, market research, healthcare, education, and psychology. Their adaptability makes them suitable for investigating diverse research questions.

Questionnaire and survey  are two terms often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings in the context of research. A survey refers to the broader process of data collection that may involve various methods. A survey can encompass different data collection techniques, such as interviews , focus groups, observations, and yes, questionnaires.

Pros and Cons of Using Questionnaires in Research:

While questionnaires offer numerous advantages in research, they also come with some disadvantages that researchers must be aware of and address appropriately. Careful questionnaire design, validation, and consideration of potential biases can help mitigate these disadvantages and enhance the effectiveness of using questionnaires as a data collection method.

Structured vs Unstructured Questionnaires

Structured questionnaire:.

A structured questionnaire consists of questions with predefined response options. Respondents are presented with a fixed set of choices and are required to select from those options. The questions in a structured questionnaire are designed to elicit specific and quantifiable responses. Structured questionnaires are particularly useful for collecting quantitative data and are often employed in surveys and studies where standardized and comparable data are necessary.

Advantages of Structured Questionnaires:

• Easy to analyze and interpret: The fixed response options facilitate straightforward data analysis and comparison across respondents.
• Efficient for large-scale data collection: Structured questionnaires are time-efficient, allowing researchers to collect data from a large number of respondents.
• Reduces response bias: The predefined response options minimize potential response bias and maintain consistency in data collection.

Limitations of Structured Questionnaires:

• Lack of depth: Structured questionnaires may not capture in-depth insights or nuances as respondents are limited to pre-defined response choices. Hence, they may not reveal the reasons behind respondents’ choices, limiting the understanding of their perspectives.
• Limited flexibility: The fixed response options may not cover all potential responses, therefore, potentially restricting respondents’ answers.

Unstructured Questionnaire:

An unstructured questionnaire consists of questions that allow respondents to provide detailed and unrestricted responses. Unlike structured questionnaires, there are no predefined response options, giving respondents the freedom to express their thoughts in their own words. Furthermore, unstructured questionnaires are valuable for collecting qualitative data and obtaining in-depth insights into respondents’ experiences, opinions, or feelings.

Advantages of Unstructured Questionnaires:

• Rich qualitative data: Unstructured questionnaires yield detailed and comprehensive qualitative data, providing valuable and novel insights into respondents’ perspectives.
• Flexibility in responses: Respondents have the freedom to express themselves in their own words. Hence, allowing for a wide range of responses.

Limitations of Unstructured Questionnaires:

• Time-consuming analysis: Analyzing open-ended responses can be time-consuming, since, each response requires careful reading and interpretation.
• Subjectivity in interpretation: The analysis of open-ended responses may be subjective, as researchers interpret and categorize responses based on their judgment.
• May require smaller sample size: Due to the depth of responses, researchers may need a smaller sample size for comprehensive analysis, making generalizations more challenging.

Types of Questions in a Questionnaire

In a questionnaire, researchers typically use the following most common types of questions to gather a variety of information from respondents:

1. Open-Ended Questions:

These questions allow respondents to provide detailed and unrestricted responses in their own words. Open-ended questions are valuable for gathering qualitative data and in-depth insights.

Example: What suggestions do you have for improving our product?

2. Multiple-Choice Questions

Respondents choose one answer from a list of provided options. This type of question is suitable for gathering categorical data or preferences.

Example: Which of the following social media/academic networking platforms do you use to promote your research?

• ResearchGate
• Academia.edu

3. Dichotomous Questions

Respondents choose between two options, typically “yes” or “no”, “true” or “false”, or “agree” or “disagree”.

Example: Have you ever published in open access journals before?

4. Scaling Questions

These questions, also known as rating scale questions, use a predefined scale that allows respondents to rate or rank their level of agreement, satisfaction, importance, or other subjective assessments. These scales help researchers quantify subjective data and make comparisons across respondents.

There are several types of scaling techniques used in scaling questions:

i. Likert Scale:

The Likert scale is one of the most common scaling techniques. It presents respondents with a series of statements and asks them to rate their level of agreement or disagreement using a range of options, typically from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.For example: Please indicate your level of agreement with the statement: “The content presented in the webinar was relevant and aligned with the advertised topic.”

• Strongly Agree
• Strongly Disagree

ii. Semantic Differential Scale:

The semantic differential scale measures respondents’ perceptions or attitudes towards an item using opposite adjectives or bipolar words. Respondents rate the item on a scale between the two opposites. For example:

• Easy —— Difficult
• Satisfied —— Unsatisfied
• Very likely —— Very unlikely

iii. Numerical Rating Scale:

This scale requires respondents to provide a numerical rating on a predefined scale. It can be a simple 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 scale, where higher numbers indicate higher agreement, satisfaction, or importance.

iv. Ranking Questions:

Respondents rank items in order of preference or importance. Ranking questions help identify preferences or priorities.

Example: Please rank the following features of our app in order of importance (1 = Most Important, 5 = Least Important):

• User Interface
• Functionality
• Customer Support

By using a mix of question types, researchers can gather both quantitative and qualitative data, providing a comprehensive understanding of the research topic and enabling meaningful analysis and interpretation of the results. The choice of question types depends on the research objectives , the desired depth of information, and the data analysis requirements.

Methods of Administering Questionnaires

There are several methods for administering questionnaires, and the choice of method depends on factors such as the target population, research objectives , convenience, and resources available. Here are some common methods of administering questionnaires:

Each method has its advantages and limitations. Online surveys offer convenience and a large reach, but they may be limited to individuals with internet access. Face-to-face interviews allow for in-depth responses but can be time-consuming and costly. Telephone surveys have broad reach but may be limited by declining response rates. Researchers should choose the method that best suits their research objectives, target population, and available resources to ensure successful data collection.

How to Design a Questionnaire

Designing a good questionnaire is crucial for gathering accurate and meaningful data that aligns with your research objectives. Here are essential steps and tips to create a well-designed questionnaire:

1. Define Your Research Objectives : Clearly outline the purpose and specific information you aim to gather through the questionnaire.

2. Identify Your Target Audience : Understand respondents’ characteristics and tailor the questionnaire accordingly.

3. Develop the Questions :

• Write Clear and Concise Questions
• Avoid Leading or Biasing Questions
• Sequence Questions Logically
• Group Related Questions
• Include Demographic Questions

4. Provide Well-defined Response Options : Offer exhaustive response choices for closed-ended questions.

5. Consider Skip Logic and Branching : Customize the questionnaire based on previous answers.

6. Pilot Test the Questionnaire : Identify and address issues through a pilot study .

7. Seek Expert Feedback : Validate the questionnaire with subject matter experts.

8. Obtain Ethical Approval : Comply with ethical guidelines , obtain consent, and ensure confidentiality before administering the questionnaire.

9. Administer the Questionnaire : Choose the right mode and provide clear instructions.

10. Test the Survey Platform : Ensure compatibility and usability for online surveys.

By following these steps and paying attention to questionnaire design principles, you can create a well-structured and effective questionnaire that gathers reliable data and helps you achieve your research objectives.

Characteristics of a Good Questionnaire

A good questionnaire possesses several essential elements that contribute to its effectiveness. Furthermore, these characteristics ensure that the questionnaire is well-designed, easy to understand, and capable of providing valuable insights. Here are some key characteristics of a good questionnaire:

1. Clarity and Simplicity : Questions should be clear, concise, and unambiguous. Avoid using complex language or technical terms that may confuse respondents. Simple and straightforward questions ensure that respondents interpret them consistently.

2. Relevance and Focus : Each question should directly relate to the research objectives and contribute to answering the research questions. Consequently, avoid including extraneous or irrelevant questions that could lead to data clutter.

3. Mix of Question Types : Utilize a mix of question types, including open-ended, Likert scale, and multiple-choice questions. This variety allows for both qualitative and quantitative data collections .

4. Validity and Reliability : Ensure the questionnaire measures what it intends to measure (validity) and produces consistent results upon repeated administration (reliability). Validation should be conducted through expert review and previous research.

5. Appropriate Length : Keep the questionnaire’s length appropriate and manageable to avoid respondent fatigue or dropouts. Long questionnaires may result in incomplete or rushed responses.

6. Clear Instructions : Include clear instructions at the beginning of the questionnaire to guide respondents on how to complete it. Explain any technical terms, formats, or concepts if necessary.

7. User-Friendly Format : Design the questionnaire to be visually appealing and user-friendly. Use consistent formatting, adequate spacing, and a logical page layout.

8. Data Validation and Cleaning : Incorporate validation checks to ensure data accuracy and reliability. Consider mechanisms to detect and correct inconsistent or missing responses during data cleaning.

By incorporating these characteristics, researchers can create a questionnaire that maximizes data quality, minimizes response bias, and provides valuable insights for their research.

In the pursuit of advancing research and gaining meaningful insights, investing time and effort into designing effective questionnaires is a crucial step. A well-designed questionnaire is more than a mere set of questions; it is a masterpiece of precision and ingenuity. Each question plays a vital role in shaping the narrative of our research, guiding us through the labyrinth of data to meaningful conclusions. Indeed, a well-designed questionnaire serves as a powerful tool for unlocking valuable insights and generating robust findings that impact society positively.

Have you ever designed a research questionnaire? Reflect on your experience and share your insights with researchers globally through Enago Academy’s Open Blogging Platform . Join our diverse community of 1000K+ researchers and authors to exchange ideas, strategies, and best practices, and together, let’s shape the future of data collection and maximize the impact of questionnaires in the ever-evolving landscape of research.

Frequently Asked Questions

A research questionnaire is a structured tool used to gather data from participants in a systematic manner. It consists of a series of carefully crafted questions designed to collect specific information related to a research study.

Questionnaires play a pivotal role in both quantitative and qualitative research, enabling researchers to collect insights, opinions, attitudes, or behaviors from respondents. This aids in hypothesis testing, understanding, and informed decision-making, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and facilitating comparisons.

Questionnaires are a versatile tool employed in various research designs to gather data efficiently and comprehensively. They find extensive use in both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, making them a fundamental component of research across disciplines. Some research designs that commonly utilize questionnaires include: a) Cross-Sectional Studies b) Longitudinal Studies c) Descriptive Research d) Correlational Studies e) Causal-Comparative Studies f) Experimental Research g) Survey Research h) Case Studies i) Exploratory Research

A survey is a comprehensive data collection method that can include various techniques like interviews and observations. A questionnaire is a specific set of structured questions within a survey designed to gather standardized responses. While a survey is a broader approach, a questionnaire is a focused tool for collecting specific data.

The choice of questionnaire type depends on the research objectives, the type of data required, and the preferences of respondents. Some common types include: • Structured Questionnaires: These questionnaires consist of predefined, closed-ended questions with fixed response options. They are easy to analyze and suitable for quantitative research. • Semi-Structured Questionnaires: These questionnaires combine closed-ended questions with open-ended ones. They offer more flexibility for respondents to provide detailed explanations. • Unstructured Questionnaires: These questionnaires contain open-ended questions only, allowing respondents to express their thoughts and opinions freely. They are commonly used in qualitative research.

Following these steps ensures effective questionnaire administration for reliable data collection: • Choose a Method: Decide on online, face-to-face, mail, or phone administration. • Online Surveys: Use platforms like SurveyMonkey • Pilot Test: Test on a small group before full deployment • Clear Instructions: Provide concise guidelines • Follow-Up: Send reminders if needed

Thank you, Riya. This is quite helpful. As discussed, response bias is one of the disadvantages in the use of questionnaires. One way to help limit this can be to use scenario based questions. These type of questions may help the respondents to be more reflective and active in the process.

Thank you, Dear Riya. This is quite helpful.

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Your ultimate guide to questionnaires and how to design a good one

The written questionnaire is the heart and soul of any survey research project. Whether you conduct your survey using an online questionnaire, in person, by email or over the phone, the way you design your questionnaire plays a critical role in shaping the quality of the data and insights that you’ll get from your target audience. Keep reading to get actionable tips.

What is a questionnaire?

A questionnaire is a research tool consisting of a set of questions or other ‘prompts’ to collect data from a set of respondents.

When used in most research, a questionnaire will consist of a number of types of questions (primarily open-ended and closed) in order to gain both quantitative data that can be analyzed to draw conclusions, and qualitative data to provide longer, more specific explanations.

A research questionnaire is often mistaken for a survey - and many people use the term questionnaire and survey, interchangeably.

But that’s incorrect.

Which is what we talk about next.

Get started with our free survey maker with 50+ templates

Survey vs. questionnaire – what’s the difference?

Before we go too much further, let’s consider the differences between surveys and questionnaires.

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but there is an important difference between them.

Survey definition

A survey is the process of collecting data from a set of respondents and using it to gather insights.

Survey research can be conducted using a questionnaire, but won’t always involve one.

Questionnaire definition

A questionnaire is the list of questions you circulate to your target audience.

In other words, the survey is the task you’re carrying out, and the questionnaire is the instrument you’re using to do it.

By itself, a questionnaire doesn’t achieve much.

It’s when you put it into action as part of a survey that you start to get results.

Advantages vs disadvantages of using a questionnaire

While a questionnaire is a popular method to gather data for market research or other studies, there are a few disadvantages to using this method (although there are plenty of advantages to using a questionnaire too).

Let’s have a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using a questionnaire for collecting data.

Advantages of using a questionnaire

1. questionnaires are relatively cheap.

Depending on the complexity of your study, using a questionnaire can be cost effective compared to other methods.

You simply need to write your survey questionnaire, and send it out and then process the responses.

You can set up an online questionnaire relatively easily, or simply carry out market research on the street if that’s the best method.

2. You can get and analyze results quickly

Again depending on the size of your survey you can get results back from a questionnaire quickly, often within 24 hours of putting the questionnaire live.

It also means you can start to analyze responses quickly too.

3. They’re easily scalable

You can easily send an online questionnaire to anyone in the world and with the right software you can quickly identify your target audience and your questionnaire to them.

4. Questionnaires are easy to analyze

If your questionnaire design has been done properly, it’s quick and easy to analyze results from questionnaires once responses start to come back.

This is particularly useful with large scale market research projects.

Because all respondents are answering the same questions, it’s simple to identify trends.

5. You can use the results to make accurate decisions

As a research instrument, a questionnaire is ideal for commercial research because the data you get back is from your target audience (or ideal customers) and the information you get back on their thoughts, preferences or behaviors allows you to make business decisions.

6. A questionnaire can cover any topic

One of the biggest advantages of using questionnaires when conducting research is (because you can adapt them using different types and styles of open ended questions and closed ended questions) they can be used to gather data on almost any topic.

There are many types of questionnaires you can design to gather both quantitative data and qualitative data - so they’re a useful tool for all kinds of data analysis.

Disadvantages of using a questionnaire

1. respondents could lie.

This is by far the biggest risk with a questionnaire, especially when dealing with sensitive topics.

Rather than give their actual opinion, a respondent might feel pressured to give the answer they deem more socially acceptable, which doesn’t give you accurate results.

2. Respondents might not answer every question

There are all kinds of reasons respondents might not answer every question, from questionnaire length, they might not understand what’s being asked, or they simply might not want to answer it.

If you get questionnaires back without complete responses it could negatively affect your research data and provide an inaccurate picture.

3. They might interpret what’s being asked incorrectly

This is a particular problem when running a survey across geographical boundaries and often comes down to the design of the survey questionnaire.

If your questions aren’t written in a very clear way, the respondent might misunderstand what’s being asked and provide an answer that doesn’t reflect what they actually think.

Again this can negatively affect your research data.

4. You could introduce bias

The whole point of producing a questionnaire is to gather accurate data from which decisions can be made or conclusions drawn.

But the data collected can be heavily impacted if the researchers accidentally introduce bias into the questions.

This can be easily done if the researcher is trying to prove a certain hypothesis with their questionnaire, and unwittingly write questions that push people towards giving a certain answer.

In these cases respondents’ answers won’t accurately reflect what is really happening and stop you gathering more accurate data.

5. Respondents could get survey fatigue

One issue you can run into when sending out a questionnaire, particularly if you send them out regularly to the same survey sample, is that your respondents could start to suffer from survey fatigue.

In these circumstances, rather than thinking about the response options in the questionnaire and providing accurate answers, respondents could start to just tick boxes to get through the questionnaire quickly.

Again, this won’t give you an accurate data set.

Questionnaire design: How to do it

It’s essential to carefully craft a questionnaire to reduce survey error and optimize your data . The best way to think about the questionnaire is with the end result in mind.

How do you do that?

Start with questions, like:

• What is my research purpose ?
• What data do I need?
• How am I going to analyze that data?
• What questions are needed to best suit these variables?

Once you have a clear idea of the purpose of your survey, you’ll be in a better position to create an effective questionnaire.

Here are a few steps to help you get into the right mindset.

1. Keep the respondent front and center

A survey is the process of collecting information from people, so it needs to be designed around human beings first and foremost.

In his post about survey design theory, David Vannette, PhD, from the Qualtrics Methodology Lab explains the correlation between the way a survey is designed and the quality of data that is extracted.

“To begin designing an effective survey, take a step back and try to understand what goes on in your respondents’ heads when they are taking your survey.

This step is critical to making sure that your questionnaire makes it as likely as possible that the response process follows that expected path.”

From writing the questions to designing the survey flow, the respondent’s point of view should always be front and center in your mind during a questionnaire design.

2. How to write survey questions

Your questionnaire should only be as long as it needs to be, and every question needs to deliver value.

That means your questions must each have an individual purpose and produce the best possible data for that purpose, all while supporting the overall goal of the survey.

A question must also must be phrased in a way that is easy for all your respondents to understand, and does not produce false results.

To do this, remember the following principles:

Get into the respondent's head

The process for a respondent answering a survey question looks like this:

• The respondent reads the question and determines what information they need to answer it.
• They search their memory for that information.
• They make judgments about that information.
• They translate that judgment into one of the answer options you’ve provided. This is the process of taking the data they have and matching that information with the question that’s asked.

When wording questions, make sure the question means the same thing to all respondents. Words should have one meaning, few syllables, and the sentences should have few words.

Only use the words needed to ask your question and not a word more .

Note that it’s important that the respondent understands the intent behind your question.

If they don’t, they may answer a different question and the data can be skewed.

Some contextual help text, either in the introduction to the questionnaire or before the question itself, can help make sure the respondent understands your goals and the scope of your research.

Use mutually exclusive responses

Be sure to make your response categories mutually exclusive.

Consider the question:

What is your age?

Respondents that are 31 years old have two options, as do respondents that are 40 and 55. As a result, it is impossible to predict which category they will choose.

This can distort results and frustrate respondents. It can be easily avoided by making responses mutually exclusive.

The following question is much better:

This question is clear and will give us better results.

Ask specific questions

Nonspecific questions can confuse respondents and influence results.

Do you like orange juice?

• Like very much
• Neither like nor dislike
• Dislike very much

This question is very unclear. Is it asking about taste, texture, price, or the nutritional content? Different respondents will read this question differently.

A specific question will get more specific answers that are actionable.

How much do you like the current price of orange juice?

This question is more specific and will get better results.

If you need to collect responses about more than one aspect of a subject, you can include multiple questions on it. (Do you like the taste of orange juice? Do you like the nutritional content of orange juice? etc.)

Use a variety of question types

If all of your questionnaire, survey or poll questions are structured the same way (e.g. yes/no or multiple choice) the respondents are likely to become bored and tune out. That could mean they pay less attention to how they’re answering or even give up altogether.

Instead, mix up the question types to keep the experience interesting and varied. It’s a good idea to include questions that yield both qualitative and quantitative data.

For example, an open-ended questionnaire item such as “describe your attitude to life” will provide qualitative data – a form of information that’s rich, unstructured and unpredictable. The respondent will tell you in their own words what they think and feel.

A quantitative / close-ended questionnaire item, such as “Which word describes your attitude to life? a) practical b) philosophical” gives you a much more structured answer, but the answers will be less rich and detailed.

Open-ended questions take more thought and effort to answer, so use them sparingly. They also require a different kind of treatment once your survey is in the analysis stage.

3. Pre-test your questionnaire

Always pre-test a questionnaire before sending it out to respondents. This will help catch any errors you might have missed. You could ask a colleague, friend, or an expert to take the survey and give feedback. If possible, ask a few cognitive questions like, “how did you get to that response?” and “what were you thinking about when you answered that question?” Figure out what was easy for the responder and where there is potential for confusion. You can then re-word where necessary to make the experience as frictionless as possible.

If your resources allow, you could also consider using a focus group to test out your survey. Having multiple respondents road-test the questionnaire will give you a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Match the focus group to your target respondents as closely as possible, for example in terms of age, background, gender, and level of education.

Note: Don't forget to make your survey as accessible as possible for increased response rates.

Questionnaire examples and templates

There are free questionnaire templates and example questions available for all kinds of surveys and market research, many of them online. But they’re not all created equal and you should use critical judgement when selecting one. After all, the questionnaire examples may be free but the time and energy you’ll spend carrying out a survey are not.

If you’re using online questionnaire templates as the basis for your own, make sure it has been developed by professionals and is specific to the type of research you’re doing to ensure higher completion rates. As we’ve explored here, using the wrong kinds of questions can result in skewed or messy data, and could even prompt respondents to abandon the questionnaire without finishing or give thoughtless answers.

You’ll find a full library of downloadable survey templates in the Qualtrics Marketplace , covering many different types of research from employee engagement to post-event feedback . All are fully customizable and have been developed by Qualtrics experts.

Qualtrics // Experience Management

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management category, is a cloud-native software platform that empowers organizations to deliver exceptional experiences and build deep relationships with their customers and employees.

With insights from Qualtrics, organizations can identify and resolve the greatest friction points in their business, retain and engage top talent, and bring the right products and services to market. Nearly 20,000 organizations around the world use Qualtrics’ advanced AI to listen, understand, and take action. Qualtrics uses its vast universe of experience data to form the largest database of human sentiment in the world. Qualtrics is co-headquartered in Provo, Utah and Seattle.

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Home » Questionnaire – Definition, Types, and Examples

Questionnaire – Definition, Types, and Examples

Table of Contents

Questionnaire

Definition:

A Questionnaire is a research tool or survey instrument that consists of a set of questions or prompts designed to gather information from individuals or groups of people.

It is a standardized way of collecting data from a large number of people by asking them a series of questions related to a specific topic or research objective. The questions may be open-ended or closed-ended, and the responses can be quantitative or qualitative. Questionnaires are widely used in research, marketing, social sciences, healthcare, and many other fields to collect data and insights from a target population.

History of Questionnaire

The history of questionnaires can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, who used questionnaires as a means of assessing public opinion. However, the modern history of questionnaires began in the late 19th century with the rise of social surveys.

The first social survey was conducted in the United States in 1874 by Francis A. Walker, who used a questionnaire to collect data on labor conditions. In the early 20th century, questionnaires became a popular tool for conducting social research, particularly in the fields of sociology and psychology.

One of the most influential figures in the development of the questionnaire was the psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the 1940s and 1950s developed the personality questionnaire, a standardized instrument for measuring personality traits. Cattell’s work helped establish the questionnaire as a key tool in personality research.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the use of questionnaires expanded into other fields, including market research, public opinion polling, and health surveys. With the rise of computer technology, questionnaires became easier and more cost-effective to administer, leading to their widespread use in research and business settings.

Today, questionnaires are used in a wide range of settings, including academic research, business, healthcare, and government. They continue to evolve as a research tool, with advances in computer technology and data analysis techniques making it easier to collect and analyze data from large numbers of participants.

Types of Questionnaire

Types of Questionnaires are as follows:

Structured Questionnaire

This type of questionnaire has a fixed format with predetermined questions that the respondent must answer. The questions are usually closed-ended, which means that the respondent must select a response from a list of options.

Unstructured Questionnaire

An unstructured questionnaire does not have a fixed format or predetermined questions. Instead, the interviewer or researcher can ask open-ended questions to the respondent and let them provide their own answers.

Open-ended Questionnaire

An open-ended questionnaire allows the respondent to answer the question in their own words, without any pre-determined response options. The questions usually start with phrases like “how,” “why,” or “what,” and encourage the respondent to provide more detailed and personalized answers.

Close-ended Questionnaire

In a closed-ended questionnaire, the respondent is given a set of predetermined response options to choose from. This type of questionnaire is easier to analyze and summarize, but may not provide as much insight into the respondent’s opinions or attitudes.

Mixed Questionnaire

A mixed questionnaire is a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions. This type of questionnaire allows for more flexibility in terms of the questions that can be asked, and can provide both quantitative and qualitative data.

Pictorial Questionnaire:

In a pictorial questionnaire, instead of using words to ask questions, the questions are presented in the form of pictures, diagrams or images. This can be particularly useful for respondents who have low literacy skills, or for situations where language barriers exist. Pictorial questionnaires can also be useful in cross-cultural research where respondents may come from different language backgrounds.

Types of Questions in Questionnaire

The types of Questions in Questionnaire are as follows:

Multiple Choice Questions

These questions have several options for participants to choose from. They are useful for getting quantitative data and can be used to collect demographic information.

• a. Red b . Blue c. Green d . Yellow

Rating Scale Questions

These questions ask participants to rate something on a scale (e.g. from 1 to 10). They are useful for measuring attitudes and opinions.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?

Open-Ended Questions

These questions allow participants to answer in their own words and provide more in-depth and detailed responses. They are useful for getting qualitative data.

• What do you think are the biggest challenges facing your community?

Likert Scale Questions

These questions ask participants to rate how much they agree or disagree with a statement. They are useful for measuring attitudes and opinions.

How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement:

“I enjoy exercising regularly.”

• a . Strongly Agree
• c . Neither Agree nor Disagree
• d . Disagree
• e . Strongly Disagree

Demographic Questions

These questions ask about the participant’s personal information such as age, gender, ethnicity, education level, etc. They are useful for segmenting the data and analyzing results by demographic groups.

• What is your age?

Yes/No Questions

These questions only have two options: Yes or No. They are useful for getting simple, straightforward answers to a specific question.

Have you ever traveled outside of your home country?

Ranking Questions

These questions ask participants to rank several items in order of preference or importance. They are useful for measuring priorities or preferences.

Please rank the following factors in order of importance when choosing a restaurant:

• a. Quality of Food
• c. Ambiance
• d. Location

Matrix Questions

These questions present a matrix or grid of options that participants can choose from. They are useful for getting data on multiple variables at once.

Dichotomous Questions

These questions present two options that are opposite or contradictory. They are useful for measuring binary or polarized attitudes.

Do you support the death penalty?

How to Make a Questionnaire

Step-by-Step Guide for Making a Questionnaire:

• Define your research objectives: Before you start creating questions, you need to define the purpose of your questionnaire and what you hope to achieve from the data you collect.
• Choose the appropriate question types: Based on your research objectives, choose the appropriate question types to collect the data you need. Refer to the types of questions mentioned earlier for guidance.
• Develop questions: Develop clear and concise questions that are easy for participants to understand. Avoid leading or biased questions that might influence the responses.
• Organize questions: Organize questions in a logical and coherent order, starting with demographic questions followed by general questions, and ending with specific or sensitive questions.
• Pilot the questionnaire : Test your questionnaire on a small group of participants to identify any flaws or issues with the questions or the format.
• Refine the questionnaire : Based on feedback from the pilot, refine and revise the questionnaire as necessary to ensure that it is valid and reliable.
• Distribute the questionnaire: Distribute the questionnaire to your target audience using a method that is appropriate for your research objectives, such as online surveys, email, or paper surveys.
• Collect and analyze data: Collect the completed questionnaires and analyze the data using appropriate statistical methods. Draw conclusions from the data and use them to inform decision-making or further research.
• Report findings: Present your findings in a clear and concise report, including a summary of the research objectives, methodology, key findings, and recommendations.

Questionnaire Administration Modes

There are several modes of questionnaire administration. The choice of mode depends on the research objectives, sample size, and available resources. Some common modes of administration include:

• Self-administered paper questionnaires: Participants complete the questionnaire on paper, either in person or by mail. This mode is relatively low cost and easy to administer, but it may result in lower response rates and greater potential for errors in data entry.
• Online questionnaires: Participants complete the questionnaire on a website or through email. This mode is convenient for both researchers and participants, as it allows for fast and easy data collection. However, it may be subject to issues such as low response rates, lack of internet access, and potential for fraudulent responses.
• Telephone surveys: Trained interviewers administer the questionnaire over the phone. This mode allows for a large sample size and can result in higher response rates, but it is also more expensive and time-consuming than other modes.
• Face-to-face interviews : Trained interviewers administer the questionnaire in person. This mode allows for a high degree of control over the survey environment and can result in higher response rates, but it is also more expensive and time-consuming than other modes.
• Mixed-mode surveys: Researchers use a combination of two or more modes to administer the questionnaire, such as using online questionnaires for initial screening and following up with telephone interviews for more detailed information. This mode can help overcome some of the limitations of individual modes, but it requires careful planning and coordination.

Example of Questionnaire

Title of the Survey: Customer Satisfaction Survey

Introduction:

We appreciate your business and would like to ensure that we are meeting your needs. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey so that we can better understand your experience with our products and services. Your feedback is important to us and will help us improve our offerings.

Instructions:

Please read each question carefully and select the response that best reflects your experience. If you have any additional comments or suggestions, please feel free to include them in the space provided at the end of the survey.

1. How satisfied are you with our product quality?

• Very satisfied
• Somewhat satisfied
• Somewhat dissatisfied
• Very dissatisfied

2. How satisfied are you with our customer service?

3. How satisfied are you with the price of our products?

4. How likely are you to recommend our products to others?

• Very likely
• Somewhat likely
• Somewhat unlikely
• Very unlikely

5. How easy was it to find the information you were looking for on our website?

• Somewhat easy
• Somewhat difficult
• Very difficult

6. How satisfied are you with the overall experience of using our products and services?

7. Is there anything that you would like to see us improve upon or change in the future?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Conclusion:

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. Your feedback is valuable to us and will help us improve our products and services. If you have any further comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Applications of Questionnaire

Some common applications of questionnaires include:

• Research : Questionnaires are commonly used in research to gather information from participants about their attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and experiences. This information can then be analyzed and used to draw conclusions and make inferences.
• Healthcare : In healthcare, questionnaires can be used to gather information about patients’ medical history, symptoms, and lifestyle habits. This information can help healthcare professionals diagnose and treat medical conditions more effectively.
• Marketing : Questionnaires are commonly used in marketing to gather information about consumers’ preferences, buying habits, and opinions on products and services. This information can help businesses develop and market products more effectively.
• Human Resources: Questionnaires are used in human resources to gather information from job applicants, employees, and managers about job satisfaction, performance, and workplace culture. This information can help organizations improve their hiring practices, employee retention, and organizational culture.
• Education : Questionnaires are used in education to gather information from students, teachers, and parents about their perceptions of the educational experience. This information can help educators identify areas for improvement and develop more effective teaching strategies.

Purpose of Questionnaire

Some common purposes of questionnaires include:

• To collect information on attitudes, opinions, and beliefs: Questionnaires can be used to gather information on people’s attitudes, opinions, and beliefs on a particular topic. For example, a questionnaire can be used to gather information on people’s opinions about a particular political issue.
• To collect demographic information: Questionnaires can be used to collect demographic information such as age, gender, income, education level, and occupation. This information can be used to analyze trends and patterns in the data.
• To measure behaviors or experiences: Questionnaires can be used to gather information on behaviors or experiences such as health-related behaviors or experiences, job satisfaction, or customer satisfaction.
• To evaluate programs or interventions: Questionnaires can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs or interventions by gathering information on participants’ experiences, opinions, and behaviors.
• To gather information for research: Questionnaires can be used to gather data for research purposes on a variety of topics.

When to use Questionnaire

Here are some situations when questionnaires might be used:

• When you want to collect data from a large number of people: Questionnaires are useful when you want to collect data from a large number of people. They can be distributed to a wide audience and can be completed at the respondent’s convenience.
• When you want to collect data on specific topics: Questionnaires are useful when you want to collect data on specific topics or research questions. They can be designed to ask specific questions and can be used to gather quantitative data that can be analyzed statistically.
• When you want to compare responses across groups: Questionnaires are useful when you want to compare responses across different groups of people. For example, you might want to compare responses from men and women, or from people of different ages or educational backgrounds.
• When you want to collect data anonymously: Questionnaires can be useful when you want to collect data anonymously. Respondents can complete the questionnaire without fear of judgment or repercussions, which can lead to more honest and accurate responses.
• When you want to save time and resources: Questionnaires can be more efficient and cost-effective than other methods of data collection such as interviews or focus groups. They can be completed quickly and easily, and can be analyzed using software to save time and resources.

Characteristics of Questionnaire

Here are some of the characteristics of questionnaires:

• Standardization : Questionnaires are standardized tools that ask the same questions in the same order to all respondents. This ensures that all respondents are answering the same questions and that the responses can be compared and analyzed.
• Objectivity : Questionnaires are designed to be objective, meaning that they do not contain leading questions or bias that could influence the respondent’s answers.
• Predefined responses: Questionnaires typically provide predefined response options for the respondents to choose from, which helps to standardize the responses and make them easier to analyze.
• Quantitative data: Questionnaires are designed to collect quantitative data, meaning that they provide numerical or categorical data that can be analyzed using statistical methods.
• Convenience : Questionnaires are convenient for both the researcher and the respondents. They can be distributed and completed at the respondent’s convenience and can be easily administered to a large number of people.
• Anonymity : Questionnaires can be anonymous, which can encourage respondents to answer more honestly and provide more accurate data.
• Reliability : Questionnaires are designed to be reliable, meaning that they produce consistent results when administered multiple times to the same group of people.
• Validity : Questionnaires are designed to be valid, meaning that they measure what they are intended to measure and are not influenced by other factors.

Advantage of Questionnaire

Some Advantage of Questionnaire are as follows:

• Standardization: Questionnaires allow researchers to ask the same questions to all participants in a standardized manner. This helps ensure consistency in the data collected and eliminates potential bias that might arise if questions were asked differently to different participants.
• Efficiency: Questionnaires can be administered to a large number of people at once, making them an efficient way to collect data from a large sample.
• Anonymity: Participants can remain anonymous when completing a questionnaire, which may make them more likely to answer honestly and openly.
• Cost-effective: Questionnaires can be relatively inexpensive to administer compared to other research methods, such as interviews or focus groups.
• Objectivity: Because questionnaires are typically designed to collect quantitative data, they can be analyzed objectively without the influence of the researcher’s subjective interpretation.
• Flexibility: Questionnaires can be adapted to a wide range of research questions and can be used in various settings, including online surveys, mail surveys, or in-person interviews.

Limitations of Questionnaire

Limitations of Questionnaire are as follows:

• Limited depth: Questionnaires are typically designed to collect quantitative data, which may not provide a complete understanding of the topic being studied. Questionnaires may miss important details and nuances that could be captured through other research methods, such as interviews or observations.
• R esponse bias: Participants may not always answer questions truthfully or accurately, either because they do not remember or because they want to present themselves in a particular way. This can lead to response bias, which can affect the validity and reliability of the data collected.
• Limited flexibility: While questionnaires can be adapted to a wide range of research questions, they may not be suitable for all types of research. For example, they may not be appropriate for studying complex phenomena or for exploring participants’ experiences and perceptions in-depth.
• Limited context: Questionnaires typically do not provide a rich contextual understanding of the topic being studied. They may not capture the broader social, cultural, or historical factors that may influence participants’ responses.
• Limited control : Researchers may not have control over how participants complete the questionnaire, which can lead to variations in response quality or consistency.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Creating a Questionnaire

Create the perfect questionnaire and collect actionable data using our online guide!

Table of Contents

• How to Create

Questionnaire Types

• Collecting Responses
• Analyzing Results
• Getting Started

What is a Questionnaire?

Definition: A questionnaire is a convenient way to collect feedback. A questionnaire can be used to measure customer satisfaction, capture employee feedback, or even conduct product research. Responses can be collected via email, web link, QR code, or using a survey panel.

The term "survey" and "questionnaire" are commonly used interchangeably. A questionnaire refers to the questions used to collect feedback (the form itself). A survey relates to the entire research process, including summarizing and analyzing questionnaire data.

Getting Started + Tips

How to make a questionnaire: Keep questions short and focused on one topic at a time. Use multiple-choice questions to fit answers into a specific category. Use an open-ended question to capture comments. A Likert scale or MaxDiff question can be used for market research. Collect responses for your questionnaire using an email collector, an anonymous link, or even a QR code.

The following 6 tips will help you create the perfect questionnaire:

1) Use 10 Questions or Less

The shorter you keep your survey, the higher your completion rates. Longer questionnaires usually tend to have a high drop-off percentage. Keeping your surveys to 10 questions or fewer forces you to draft a study that only includes important questions; you should remove trivial questions during the draft process.

2) One Idea Per Question

Make sure each question only covers one topic. Try to include only one topic at a time. For example, in an employee survey, you would not want to ask, "Do you feel satisfied with your compensation and career advancement?". Instead, you would like to separate "compensation" and "career advancement" into two questions or use a Likert scale , putting each question on a separate row.

3) Group Similar Questions Together

Suppose the survey is more than ten questions; similar questions should be grouped on separate pages. If you don't want to use more than one page, add extra spacing between groups of the question; extra white space can increase the increase the readability of your questionnaire.

4) Use Skip/Display Logic

If you have questions that only apply to certain people, consider using skip or display logic to show those questions conditionally. This will help reduce the length of your survey and boost response rates.

If you have questions that only apply to certain people, consider using skip or display logic to show those questions conditionally. This will help reduce the length of your survey and boost response rates. For example, if you asked, "Are you currently looking for new employment opportunities?". If the answer were "yes," a follow-up question would ask, "Why?"

5) Use Research Questions Like MaxDiff

Research questions are an excellent tool for customer or product questionnaires. Instead of asking multiple questions on which features are essential or what price is desirable, question types like MaxDiff and Conjoint will provide you with high-quality, actionable data that can be used for feature prioritization and product pricing. In addition, these question types will reduce the length of your questionnaire.

6) Keep the Audience in Mind

An employee questionnaire should use an anonymous link to collect responses; this will help boost trust and increase honest answers. If doing a customer study, consider adding custom data to the weblink to help identify responses. A survey panel and current customers can lend fresh perspectives for general market research.

Questionnaire Templates

Adding customer surveys to your Google review strategy will add additional data points to improve customer satisfaction. In addition, surveys are a valuable tool to identify ways to improve, establish internal benchmarks, and conduct pricing and product research to improve your company's products.

While there are numerous types of questionnaires (or survey types), these are the five most common general categories:

1) Customer Satisfaction

Capturing customer feedback is one of the most common uses of questionnaires. A good customer satisfaction survey will always revolve around a Net Promoter Score question. When the Net Promoter Score question results are tallied, one number from -100 is 100 is displayed. This number is ideal for benchmarks. Net Promoter provides quick and actionable feedback when combined with an open-ended text question.

2) Customer Effort

Measuring how easily customers can complete a purchase or take a specific action is crucial for the customer experience strategy. A customer effort score question is a rating scale from 1 to 7 (disagree to agree). Results for this question are averaged; the higher the score, the easier it is for your customers to complete tasks.

3) Employee Satisfaction & Engagement

Employee satisfaction and engagement are often used interchangeably but measure different things. Both types of surveys often use opinion scales to ask questions.

Employee satisfaction measures how satisfied employees are with their job and work environment. Standard measures of employee satisfaction include salary, benefits, and co-worker relationships.

Employee engagement relates to the emotional commitment employees have to an organization. It goes beyond simple satisfaction. Standard measures of engagement include belief in the company mission, opportunities for career growth, and being inspired to perform at a high level.

4) Employee Exit Interviews

When employees leave for new opportunities, sending a questionnaire is a great way to understand why that employee is leaving. The feedback obtained here can be used to improve the workplace and reduce employee turnover.

5) Product Research

MaxDiff is used to identify what is most important to your audience. For example, if building a new mobile application, asking a group of users what they think is least and most important will help guide product strategy; your team should only focus on the important areas.

For pricing a new product, Van Westendorp will give you a range of prices the market is willing to expect. You could price your product too high or too low without a question like this, reducing your market penetration.

Collecting Responses For Your Questionnaire

There are a few different ways to collect feedback for questionnaires. Depending on your needs, each one could have an advantage.

With email distribution, you would upload a list of email addresses, and the platform would automatically place a link to your questionnaire inside the email body. One advantage is sending email reminders to respondents who still need to complete your survey. In addition, the email links are unique for each respondent, so you can track email open and click rates. As a result, email surveys are ideal for customer research.

A web link is a convenient way to collect feedback at your convenience. You can place a web link on social media, your website, or even inside your CRM email program (instead of an email collector with a unique link to each person). Custom data can be included in the link, such as store location. This custom data can be used to segment and filter results.

Anonymous Link

When you want to protect your respondents' identities, you use an anonymous link . Anonymous inks do not store respondent information, IP address, or email address. Because of this, anonymous survey links are perfect for employee surveys.

QR code Surveys

QR code surveys can be placed on paper receipts, product packaging, or flyers. In addition, QR codes are a great way to collect feedback after or during an event or even during in-person focus groups.

Survey Panels

If you're conducting market research and need access to a customer base, using a survey panel will get you the responses required. A good survey panel will allow you to target specific demographics, job titles, or interest levels (such as car enthusiasts). When using survey panels, you'll want to double-check and clean your data for low-quality responses. People who speed through your survey or mark the first answer for all questions should be removed.

How to Analyze Questionnaire Data

When analyzing the data from a questionnaire, consider a few advanced techniques like the ones below. These techniques will give you better insights than just simple graphs and charts.

Creating a segment or a cross-tabulation is the easiest way to dive deeper into your results. For example, if you conducted an employee satisfaction survey, the overall scores for the company could be high. But that might only tell part of the story. For example, if your company has multiple departments, you should create a cross-tabulation for each department. You might notice that there is one department with low scores. or one department with high scores.

If your company conducted its first Net Promoter Score survey and the results were -10, that score would be your benchmark. Each subsequent customer survey you run should be compared against that initial number to improve it each time.

TURF Analysis

This is an advanced research technique but very valuable. TURF analysis analysis stands for "Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency" and is used to find the combination of items that would provide the highest reach level. For example, suppose you ask, "Which of the following flavor of ice cream would you buy?" If you run a TURF analysis on the results, you could find the top 3 or 4 combinations of flavors that would result in the highest sales.

Unsure Where to Start?

Creating a questionnaire can be a challenging process. However, these three suggestions can help you with the perfect questionnaire strategy.

1) Talk With Your Team

Some departments might want to conduct pricing research and do simple Net Promoter Score surveys. Having your organization aligned on strategy will simplify the process and eliminate any possibility of re-work. An aligned strategy will also mean a shorter study with fewer overlapping questions.

2) Start with a Template

A pre-made template will show you how to format and word questions. Next, try multiple templates to understand the various question types.

3) Look at Competitor Surveys

You might notice competitors asking specific questions - this would be a sign that those questions provide valuable metrics. If you can incorporate the great things your competition does while making it more efficient for respondents, your questionnaire campaigns will have a greater chance of success.

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We have you covered on anything from customer surveys, employee surveys, to market research. Get started and create your first survey for free.

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How to Design a Questionnaire

Bryn Farnsworth

In this guide on how to design a questionnaire, we take you through what a good questionnaire is, how to perfect your design and questions, as well as how best to implement the questionnaire in your research. At the end of the guide, readers will have a thorough understanding of how to design a questionnaire, as well as have the opportunity to download our experimental design guide for free for future reference when building studies and experiments.

Table of Contents

If you want to find out something about a person, you’d usually just ask them. If you want to ask a few questions for a group of people, maybe you’d get together as a group. If you want to do research on the answers, you’d give them a questionnaire.

Questionnaires are a crucial part of research. There are many other tools that are used to find out about how people think, feel, and act, but the act of asking remains central to finding out what people explicitly think.

While questionnaires have likely been used for hundreds of years [1], the first recorded instance arose from the result of the work of Adolphe Quetelet , a French polymath, in 1835. He was interested in applying the same rigorous methodologies applied to natural science as to the humanities. By recording – through questionnaires (well, technically surveys) – the physical characteristics of soldiers, he essentially invented the field of sociology. This all goes to say: questionnaires can be powerful things.

Despite the lengthy and illustrious history of questionnaires, they are still not used necessarily in the right way. There remain various ways to carry out such work, and many pitfalls abound.

Below, we will define what a questionnaire actually is (including what separates it from surveys), and provide a guide to making one in the best possible way.

What are questionnaires?

Questionnaires are a set of written questions designed to gather standardized information about the opinions, preferences, experiences, intentions, and behavior of individuals, and can be devised for the purposes of a scientific study. Traditionally, they have been said to contrast with surveys in the sense that they do not collect mass data for further analysis, however the terms are largely used interchangeably these days (and many research studies also use them together).

While questionnaires provide a comparatively cheap, prompt, and efficient means of obtaining large amounts of information, questionnaire design is a multistage process that requires attention to a number of aspects at the same time to gather the information you seek. Why exactly is that?

Depending on the kind of information you aim to acquire, questions need to be asked in varying degrees of detail and in specific ways.

Given the same topic, it’s rather likely that different researchers will come up with different questionnaires that vary widely in their choice of questions, a line of questioning, use of open-ended questions, and length.

Question everything – what makes a good questionnaire?

Basically, well-designed questionnaires are highly structured to allow the same types of information to be collected from a large number of respondents in the same way and for data to be analyzed quantitatively .

Open and Closed Questionnaire Formats

Among others, the design of your questionnaire will depend on whether you choose an open format to collect exploratory information or a closed format to acquire quantitative data.

Advantages of open format:

• Allows to explore the range of possible topics arising from your research question
• Supports the understanding and generation of hypotheses on a topic

Advantages of closed format (multiple choice):

• Easy and quick to complete
• Ensures all respondents receive same stimuli
• Easy to record and analyze results quantitatively

Now how should you go about it? Planning and preparation are key. Although questionnaire design can seem simple at the surface, there are several components you want to make sure you get right. Before you know how to exactly phrase your questions, you need to define the goals and aims of your research, understand who you’ll be talking to, and design everything accordingly. Below, we go through exactly how to do this.

Six steps to good questionnaire design

#1: identify your research aims and the goal of your questionnaire.

What kind of information do you want to gather with your questionnaire? What is your main objective?

Ideally, there are already existing questionnaires that have been validated by published research that you can use (or maybe just to borrow a couple of ideas from). This can occur frequently within psychological research, as there is a broad range of research being carried out in a variety of different fields.

While this can be quite common, it’s not always the case. It might, for example, be rather difficult to find or reuse existing questionnaires for commercial applications. In this case, you might still be able to draw inspiration from pre-existing research, although greater care in the following steps will likely be needed.

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#2: Define your target respondents

Clearly, you can’t test everyone – it’s rather plausible that there have to be certain restrictions with respect to the target audience of your questionnaire. The selection of groups is a key factor for maximizing the robustness of your study.

Another aspect to consider is whether you want to run multiple questionnaire sessions over a longer period of time with a single group ( longitudinal design ), or if you want to present your questionnaire once to two or more groups ( cross-sectional design ).

While the former allows you to analyze how the questionnaire results of the group change over time, the latter delivers insights into differences among groups.

#3: Develop questions

Smart questions are the cornerstone of every questionnaire. To make them work, they have to be phrased in a way that prevents any misunderstandings or ambiguities.

It’s often a lost cause trying to analyze data from a questionnaire where people have mixed things up, selected incorrect answers or haven’t been able to read or understand the questions at all.

It makes a significant difference whether you want to hand a questionnaire to children, adults, or maybe even elderly participants. It’s important to consider the cognitive, attentional, and sensory competencies of your target group – handing out long questionnaires with a huge amount of questions in small letter print and complicated phrasing might be too taxing for many participant groups.

Additionally, remember to avoid jargon or technical language – the text needs to be fully understood by anyone completing the questionnaire.

#4: Choose your question type

There’s a wide variety in how to phrase questions. In explorative questionnaires, you will find mainly open questions, where participants can fill in any answer (this makes sense whenever you try to gain an understanding of the topics associated with your research question).

By contrast, quantitative questionnaires primarily include closed-questions, which have been predefined by the researcher either in form of multiple choice answers or rating scales (such as the Likert scale ).

Here’s one example:

Open question:

“What did you like about the webinar?”

Closed question:

“The webinar was useful.”

[  ] Strongly agree

[  ] Agree

[  ] Cannot decide

[  ] Disagree

[  ] Strongly disagree

As is usually the case, both types of questions have benefits and drawbacks that are worth considering in order to come up with a solid questionnaire design that does the trick for you.

Besides open and closed-format questions, there are several other types of questions that you can use in your questionnaire.

#5:  Design question sequence and overall layout

After optimizing each question separately it is time to improve the overall flow and layout of the questionnaire.

Are there transitions from one question to the next? Are follow-up questions placed correctly? Are skip-rules implemented (if needed) so that participants can skip questions that do not apply to them?

#6: Run a pilot

This stage is crucial for evaluation and optimization purposes. Any questionnaire should be handed to a representative sample of your target audience before you go further with it.

During piloting, you can identify issues in readability and understanding, in phrasing and overall arrangement. It could be helpful to discuss the questionnaire with pilot participants to better understand their experience. Also, keep in mind to evaluate your pilot data statistically to make sure that the analytic procedures of interest truly can be applied to the data.

I hope this post helps you set out your questionnaire or survey design. If you’d like to learn more about the fundamentals of experimental design, then download our free guide below.

Free 44-page Experimental Design Guide

For Beginners and Intermediates

• Introduction to experimental methods
• Respondent management with groups and populations
• How to set up stimulus selection and arrangement

[1] Gault, R. (1907). A History of the Questionnaire Method of Research in Psychology. The Pedagogical Seminary , 14(3), 366-383. doi: 10.1080/08919402.1907.10532551

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How to Make a Questionnaire

Last Updated: December 27, 2022 Fact Checked

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 33 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 602,415 times. Learn more...

When a company, non-profit group, or politician needs to find out how their stakeholders or constituents feel, they often create and implement a questionnaire. The results can lead to re-branding, decision-making, and policy changes if the feedback is sound. Making a questionnaire can seem very straightforward, but unless it is designed properly, the results can be skewed and unreliable.

Creating Questions

Tip: Ideally, the questionnaire will be short, so decide which of your goals are essential and which might be unnecessary.

• "Have you shopped here before?"
• "If so, how often do you shop here?" (This question would have a few explicit answers from which respondents could choose--"once a week" to "once a month," for instance)
• "How satisfied were you with your experience today?" (Likewise, this question would have limited responses--"very satisfied" to "very dissatisfied")
• "Would you recommend this store to a friend?"

• "How will you use your purchase?"
• "Where else do you normally shop?"
• "Who referred you to this store?"
• Open-ended questions are good for clarifying a previous answer--"Why do you feel this way?"

• Questions should be worded so as to maximize clarity. Confused respondents will skew your data, so questions should be as understandable as possible. Avoid double negatives, unnecessary clauses, or unclear subject-object relationships.

Note: You may consider asking the same question in different ways, which may reduce overall respondent bias and give you a better chance of finding the person's true opinion on a given topic. [3] X Research source

Implementing the Questionnaire

• Surveys delivered on the computer, by phone, and by mail can reach a broad range of people, whereas surveys administered in-person are time-intensive and limits who can participate (which may be useful).
• Surveys delivered on the computer, in person, and by mail can utilize pictures, whereas phone interviews cannot.
• Respondents may be too shy to answer certain questions in person or by phone. Decide if you want to give clarifications to your questions if the respondent doesn't understand something; only interviews given by a live person can deliver clarifications.
• A computer survey will require the respondent to have access to a computer. If your questionnaire concerns private issues, a computer survey may work best. [4] X Research source

• "Qualifiers" are questions that screen certain respondents out, preventing them from completing other questions. Position these at the beginning of your questionnaire.
• If demographics are of major concern, ask demographic questions up front.
• Save personal or complicated questions for the end of the questionnaire. Respondents will not feel as overwhelmed by these questions and may be more likely to be open and honest.

Note: You may want to order the questions so that if a person says yes or no to a certain question, they bypass any questions that don't apply to them. This will help keep the questionnaire focused and take less time to complete.

• Ask your testers for feedback. They may alert you to sections that confused them or felt out of place. User impressions about the questionnaire are just as important as the actual questionnaire.
• After you test, do some number crunching to ensure you are collecting the data you need. If you are not getting the information you want, adjust the questionnaire. You may need to reword some things, add introductions, or rearrange, add, or delete questions so your questionnaire leads you toward your goals.

Revising the Questionnaire

• For instance, you may find that a question such as "How often do you shop here?" limits your demographic to those who shop at a brick-and-mortar store. If you want to see how people purchase a specific product, you may want to broaden your question to include online shopping.
• Your implementation method may also be limiting your data. For instance, surveys administered online may be answered largely by respondents with higher-than-average computer knowledge.

• For instance, a question such as, "Why do you shop here?" may be too broad a question, which could mislead your respondents. If you want to know if the store's decor has an impact on shopping habits, you could instead ask respondents to describe how they feel about the store's decor, branding, etc.

• As above, broad questions such as, "How do you feel while shopping here?" may not give your respondents enough direction. You could instead ask, "Would you recommend this store to your friends? Why or why not?"

• For instance, if you are asking respondents to rate an experience, you should provide them with the option to respond with "very dissatisfied" as well as "very satisfied," and many options in between.

Community Q&A

• You may choose to add an "I don't know" response to questions that respondents may not have an honest opinion about. This may help you avoid collecting inaccurate answers. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1
• Be strategic about selecting your respondents. No matter how well your questionnaire is designed, your results will be less useful if your sample is biased in some way. For example, giving a survey over the Internet about respondents' computer usage could result in drastically different data than when you give the same survey over the phone, since your sample may be more familiar with computers. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1
• If possible, offer something in return for the completion of the questionnaire, or let the respondents know how their answers will be used. Such incentives can be motivating for respondents. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 2

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm
• ↑ https://www.proprofssurvey.com/blog/close-ended-questions/
• ↑ https://www.surveylegend.com/types-of-surveys/types-of-survey-methods/
• ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1551741121001157

About This Article

To make a questionnaire, write short, simply-worded questions. Use closed-ended questions, like those that require a yes-no or true-false answer, when you want responses that fall into a specified range. You could ask, for example, “Do you shop at this store?” When you want feedback on people’s experiences, write open-ended questions, such as “Why do you shop at this store?” Use a combination of these types of questions to get the information you want from your questionnaire. For more suggestions on making a questionnaire, including how to test and revise it, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Design A Questionnaire for Research: 6 Steps to Get You Started

Before you jump headfirst into a research project, it’s important to have a clear idea of what your end goal is. This will help you determine the best approach for your project and prevent you from straying down an unnecessary path. In article, you will learn six steps to design a questionnaire and learn how to draft and format it in Microsoft Word.

Conducting research involves asking questions and getting answers. In most cases, these answers take the form of survey questions, or a questionnaire as it’s commonly known.

A questionnaire can be used in almost any type of research because they are an effective way to gather information about people’s opinions, experiences, or beliefs. They are also a great tool when researching topics that involve quantitative data such as age, income levels, and education level. In article, we’ll go over six steps to designing a questionnaire for your next piece of quantitative research.

• Table of Contents

What is a Questionnaire?

A questionnaire is a form of survey research where information is collected in writing. Questionnaires may be used to elicit information about health, behaviors, experiences, or beliefs, and can be administered in person, by mail, phone, email, online, or through the internet.

When conducting research , the best questionnaires are those that are easy to understand and have a natural flow. At the same time, they need to be specific enough to address your research goals.

When designing a questionnaire, there are several things to keep in mind.

First , you need to decide on the structure of your questionnaire. Will it be a Likert scale or a multiple choice questionnaire?

Second , you need to decide how you want your questions to flow.

Third , you need to decide what questions you want to ask.

Fourth , you need to make sure you have enough space to write in.

Learn More: What is Quantitative research? Types, Pros, and Cons

6 Steps to Get You Started in Designing Questionnaire

Here are the steps that you should follow in order to design questionnaire for research.

1- Identify Your Research Goals and Objectives of Questionnaire

Before you start designing a questionnaire, you need to have a clear idea of what your research goals are.

1. Describe the form of information you hope to gather using your questionnaire.

2. What is the purpose of your study?

3. What is your main objective?

4. What is the goal of the questionnaire?

This will help you determine the best research approach and inform the type of questions you ask.

The best way to define your goals is to write a research objective. This is a one-sentence description of your research project. It should include the topic you’re researching, your research questions , and your research approach.

Now that you have a research objective, you can identify the goals behind your research.

For example , say you want to conduct a research project on food allergies and dietary restrictions.

Your research objectives might be:

• Understand the dietary restrictions of a certain group of people
• Identify how dietary restrictions affect quality of life
• Understand how people find out they have a dietary restrictions
• Learn how people are currently managing their dietary restrictions

Learn More: How to build Research Questions on the basis of Theoretical Model?

2- Determine Your Research Approach

After you’ve determined your research approach , you should identify who you’re going to be your respondents.

There are two ways to go about this.

You can decide, which respondents or group people are best according to your research objectives.

Your research approach will determine which method is best.

This way, you can get more accurate and reliable data.

You should also consider your respondents’ time, language, and technical skills.

For the best results, your respondents should be those who fit your research objectives and have the necessary time, language, and technical skills to complete your questionnaires.

Learn more: Research Methods: Definitions, Types

3- Draft Your Question naire

When you start drafting your questions, you should make sure you’re asking relevant and meaningful questions.

You should also make sure your questions are short, clear, and easy to understand.

Your questions should also be relevant to your research objectives according to your study variables. At the same time, they shouldn’t be too general. They should be specific enough to elicit an accurate response, but general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

4- Decide on Question Format

There are different question formats.

• Open-ended questions
• Closed-ended questions

Open ended questions , which accept any response, predominate in exploratory questionnaires. Comparatively, closed ended questions from quantitative questionnaires typically take the form of multiple-choice or rating-scale questions that have been established by the researcher.

You should also decide on the the medium by which you get your respondents fill questionnaires.

The first is a written questionnaire, and the second is an online questionnaire.

Written questionnaires are printed questionnaires that you can send to your respondents. This is one of the most common methods of distributing questionnaires, but it has its drawbacks as well.

• First, written questionnaires are easy to misinterpret.
• Second, they’re easy to lose or misplace.
• Third, they aren’t flexible.

Online questionnaires, on the other hand, are more easily interpreted, easier to maintain, and far more flexible.

With an online questionnaires, you have the added benefit of being able to track how people are responding to your questionnaire. You can see how many people are participating in your questionnaire, how long they are spending on each question, and how many are dropping out of your questionnaire. Keeping track of all questionnaire which would help in analyzing data and interpreting it.

5- Select a Sample Size

After you’ve drafted your questions and decided on the format of your questionnaire, you need to determine the sample size. The sample size is the number of people you plan on conducting your research means your respondents. Now that you know what your research goals are, you have an idea of the sample size you need.

For example, let’s say you want to conduct a research project on dietary restrictions. You want to find out how dietary restrictions affect people’s quality of life. To do this, you might decide to to responses from 100 people.

Keep in mind that the larger your sample size is, the more accurate your results will be.

On the other hand, the smaller your sample size is, the less accurate your results will be. Ideally, you want to aim for a sample size that is close to 100 people.

This will give you accurate results while keeping your research project manageable.

6- Run a pilot

Here is where the essential process of evaluating and optimizing a pilot begins. Before conducting the main trial, the questionnaire needs to be distributed to a sample of your target population that is typical of that group.

• You can spot problems with readability, understanding, phrasing, and general layout during the pilot stage.
• A crucial item to remember is to statistically analyze your pilot data.

Learn more:

Learn more: Survey vs. Questionnaire: What’s the Difference?

Design a questionnaire in Microsoft word

After developing questionnaire for research , its time for designing and formatting of questionnaire in Microsoft Word.

Designing a a questionnaire which is based on quantitative study that is hypothesis testing is quite easy.

You will learn how to easily design a questionnaire in Microsoft word with proper drafting and formatting of a questionnaire.

So, Let’s get started.

When you design questionnaire format, keep in mind that questionnaires typically have three parts:

• General instructions

Personal information

General instruction.

This section is called general instruction.

First, you have to write the name of your university, The name of your faculty like the faculty of Management Sciences.

Then write the name of your department like the Department of Technology Management.

Then you have to give the heading of the Questionnaire.

On the right side, you must insert the logo of your university. On the left side, you can insert the logo of your department if any.

Then you have to insert a box.

In the box, you have to write your name and tell about the title of your research.

Like “My name is Maria. I am conducting a survey on “Title of your r esearch thesis/dissertation”. I would be thankful if you fill out the questionnaire. The information you provide will be kept confidential and only be used to complete this research study. Data gathered will be presented in aggregate and no individual respondent or organization will be identified”.

That’s all for the general instruction section.

After designing general instructions in the questionnaire, you need to design about personal information section .

This section is called personal information.

Respondent had to provide personal information. Personal information includes the following:

• Ask about the organization’s name
• Name or primary key or ID card number. It must be unique
• Experience of the current organization
• Total job experience
• Designation
• Gender male or female
• Age group greater than 20. between 20 to 30. between 31 to 40. between 41 to 50. or 51 and above.

That’s all for the personal information section.

Learn more: How to Write a Synopsis for Research?

Now I will tell you about the body part of the questionnaire.

After designing the personal information section in the questionnaire, you need to design about the body of the questionnaire.

This section includes the questions which pitches your research variables like independent variable, dependent variable, moderator and mediator. You have to formulate questions in accordance with your theoretical model of your study.

Lets take this theoretical model as an example. According to this model, we will design our questionnaire.

Listing Independent Variable

Starting from Interpersonal Conflict which is independent variable.

First, we will ask questions about the independent variable. List down all the questions.

 For example, the questions may use Strongly Agree, Agree.  Participants can circle their responses.  Every item should have an obvious place for each response.

Let’s now practically show you.

Let’s suppose my independent variable is Interpersonal conflict. The items (questions) of interpersonal conflict is adapted from research paper. This will help you to study and test the variable.

Likert scale questions assess whether or not a respondent agrees with the statement, as well as the extent to which they agree or disagree. These questions typically offer 5 or 7 responses, with sentiments ranging from items such as “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

I’m done with listing items for independent variable.

Listing moderator

According to the model. Second comes the moderator.

Ask questions about the moderator. List down all the questions. 

For example, the questions may use Strongly Agree, Agree.  Participants can circle their responses.  Every item should have an obvious place for each response.

Let’s now practically show you. Let’s suppose my moderator is Withdrawal. The items (questions) of Withdrawal is adapted from research paper. This will help you to study and test the variable.

I’m done with listing items for my first moderator.

Listing mediator

According to the model. Third comes the mediator. Ask questions about the Mediator. List down all the questions. 

List all the items for your mediator like I have showed you before.

Listing second moderator

According to the model. After mediator, comes the second moderator if any. Ask questions about the second moderator.

List down all the questions. 

List all the items for your second moderator.

Listing dependent variable

According to the model.

5 th comes the dependent variable. Ask questions about the dependent variable. List down all the questions. 

List all the items for your dependent variable.

So, the body of the questionnaire consists of all the questions ( items) related to your study variables based on theoretical model. Its very important part of the questionnaire because all your research is based on this part of the questionnaire.

So here is the final look of the questionnaire which consists of three pages which contains general instructions, personal information and body. This questionnaire should be distrusted among the respondents or can be shared online via email or other social media sites.

Once you’ve gone through these six steps, you should have a clear idea of what your research project is about and where it’s headed.

This will help you stay on track and prevent you from straying down an unnecessary path. When you’re conducting research , the best approach is to keep things simple.

The simpler your questionnaire is, the more likely people are to respond to it. The best questionnaires are those that are easy to understand and have a natural flow. At the same time, they need to be specific enough to address your research goals and objectives.

I hope after reading this article on how you can design a questionnaire for research on Microsoft Word and what are the 6 Steps to Get You Started in designing your questionnaire.

Other articles

Please read through some of our other articles with examples and explanations if you’d like to learn more about research methodology.

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• Null and Alternative Hypothesis
• Reliability vs Validity
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• Sampling Error vs Sampling Bias
• Internal Validity vs External Validity
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• Plagiarism and Paraphrasing
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• Mediator and Moderator
• Type I vs Type II error
• Descriptive and Inferential Statistics
• Microsoft Excel and SPSS
• Parametric and Non-Parametric Test
• Independent vs. Dependent Variable
• Research Article and Research Paper
• Proposition and Hypothesis
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• Academic Research vs Industry Research
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• Research Lab and Hospital Lab
• Thesis Statement and Research Question
• Quantitative Researchers vs. Quantitative Traders
• Premise, Hypothesis and Supposition
• Survey Vs Experiment
• Hypothesis and Theory
• APA vs. MLA
• Ghost Authorship vs. Gift Authorship
• Research Methods
• Quantitative Research
• Qualitative Research
• Case Study Research
• Survey Research
• Conclusive Research
• Descriptive Research
• Cross-Sectional Research
• Theoretical Framework
• Conceptual Framework
• Triangulation
• Grounded Theory
• Quasi-Experimental Design
• Mixed Method
• Correlational Research
• Randomized Controlled Trial
• Stratified Sampling
• Ethnography
• Ghost Authorship
• Secondary Data Collection
• Primary Data Collection
• Ex-Post-Facto
•   Dissertation Topic
• Thesis Statement
• Research Proposal
• Research Questions
• Research Problem
• Research Gap
• Types of Research Gaps
• Operationalization of Variables
• Literature Review
• Research Hypothesis
• Questionnaire
• Reliability
• Measurement of Scale
• Sampling Techniques
• Acknowledgements
• Data Coding
• PLS-SEM model
• Principal Components Analysis
• Multivariate Analysis
• Friedman Test
• Chi-Square Test (Χ²)
• Effect Size
• Critical Values in Statistics
• Statistical Analysis
• Calculate the Sample Size for Randomized Controlled Trials
• Covariate in Statistics
• Avoid Common Mistakes in Statistics
• Standard Deviation
• Derivatives & Formulas
• Build a PLS-SEM model using AMOS
• Principal Components Analysis using SPSS
• Statistical Tools
• One-tailed and Two-tailed Test

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• Developing a Research Question

by acburton | Mar 22, 2024 | Resources for Students , Writing Resources

Selecting your research question and creating a clear goal and structure for your writing can be challenging – whether you are doing it for the first time or if you’ve done it many times before. It can be especially difficult when your research question starts to look and feel a little different somewhere between your first and final draft. Don’t panic! It’s normal for your research question to change a little (or even quite a bit) as you move through and engage with the writing process. Anticipating this can remind you to stay on track while you work and that it’ll be okay even if the literature takes you in a different direction.

What Makes an Effective Research Question?

The most effective research question will usually be a critical thinking question and should use “how” or “why” to ensure it can move beyond a yes/no or one-word type of answer. Consider how your research question can aim to reveal something new, fill in a gap, even if small, and contribute to the field in a meaningful way; How might the proposed project move knowledge forward about a particular place or process? This should be specific and achievable!

The CEWC’s Grad Writing Consultant Tariq says, “I definitely concentrated on those aspects of what I saw in the field where I believed there was an opportunity to move the discipline forward.”

General Tips

Do your research.

Utilize the librarians at your university and take the time to research your topic first. Try looking at very general sources to get an idea of what could be interesting to you before you move to more academic articles that support your rough idea of the topic. It is important that research is grounded in what you see or experience regarding the topic you have chosen and what is already known in the literature. Spend time researching articles, books, etc. that supports your thesis. Once you have a number of sources that you know support what you want to write about, formulate a research question that serves as the interrogative form of your thesis statement.

Grad Writing Consultant Deni advises, “Delineate your intervention in the literature (i.e., be strategic about the literature you discuss and clear about your contributions to it).”

Start Broadly…. then Narrow Your Topic Down to Something Manageable

When brainstorming your research question, let your mind veer toward connections or associations that you might have already considered or that seem to make sense and consider if new research terms, language or concepts come to mind that may be interesting or exciting for you as a researcher. Sometimes testing out a research question while doing some preliminary researching is also useful to see if the language you are using or the direction you are heading toward is fruitful when trying to search strategically in academic databases. Be prepared to focus on a specific area of a broad topic.

Writing Consultant Jessie recommends outlining: “I think some rough outlining with a research question in mind can be helpful for me. I’ll have a research question and maybe a working thesis that I feel may be my claim to the research question based on some preliminary materials, brainstorming, etc.” — Jessie, CEWC Writing Consultant

Try an Exercise

In the earliest phase of brainstorming, try an exercise suggested by CEWC Writing Specialist, Percival! While it is normally used in classroom or workshop settings, this exercise can easily be modified for someone working alone. The flow of the activity, if done within a group setting, is 1) someone starts with an idea, 2) three other people share their idea, and 3) the starting person picks two of these new ideas they like best and combines their original idea with those. The activity then begins again with the idea that was not chosen. The solo version of this exercise substitutes a ‘word bank,’ created using words, topics, or ideas similar to your broad, overarching theme. Pick two words or phrases from your word bank, combine it with your original idea or topic, and ‘start again’ with two different words. This serves as a replacement for different people’s suggestions. Ideas for your ‘word bank’ can range from vague prompts about mapping or webbing (e.g., where your topic falls within the discipline and others like it), to more specific concepts that come from tracing the history of an idea (its past, present, future) or mapping the idea’s related ideas, influences, etc. Care for a physics analogy? There is a particle (your topic) that you can describe, a wave that the particle traces, and a field that the particle is mapped on.

Get Feedback and Affirm Your Confidence!

Creating a few different versions of your research question (they may be the same topic/issue/theme or differ slightly) can be useful during this process. Sharing these with trusted friends, colleagues, mentors, (or tutors!) and having conversations about your questions and ideas with other people can help you decide which version you may feel most confident or interested in. Ask colleagues and mentors to share their research questions with you to get a lot of examples. Once you have done the work of developing an effective research question, do not forget to affirm your confidence! Based on your working thesis, think about how you might organize your chapters or paragraphs and what resources you have for supporting this structure and organization. This can help boost your confidence that the research question you have created is effective and fruitful.

Be Open to Change

Remember, your research question may change from your first to final draft. For questions along the way, make an appointment with the Writing Center. We are here to help you develop an effective and engaging research question and build the foundation for a solid research paper!

Example 1: In my field developing a research question involves navigating the relationship between 1) what one sees/experiences at their field site and 2) what is already known in the literature. During my preliminary research, I found that the financial value of land was often a matter of precisely these cultural factors. So, my research question ended up being: How do the social and material qualities of land entangle with processes of financialization in the city of Lahore. Regarding point #1, this question was absolutely informed by what I saw in the field. But regarding point #2, the question was also heavily shaped by the literature. – Tariq

Example 2: A research question should not be a yes/no question like “Is pollution bad?”; but an open-ended question where the answer has to be supported with reasons and explanation. The question also has to be narrowed down to a specific topic—using the same example as before—”Is pollution bad?” can be revised to “How does pollution affect people?” I would encourage students to be more specific then; e.g., what area of pollution do you want to talk about: water, air, plastic, climate change… what type of people or demographic can we focus on? …how does this affect marginalized communities, minorities, or specific areas in California? After researching and deciding on a focus, your question might sound something like: How does government policy affect water pollution and how does it affect the marginalized communities in the state of California? -Janella

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Develop Your Topic

What are you interested in? Start by brainstorming topics of interest.  Once you’ve landed on a few, do some critical background research.  What questions does your reading raise?

Once you’ve done a little digging, write down everything you know about your potential topic.  Then, write down the questions you thought of while reading.  Can you answer these questions easily, using only the background research you’ve done?

If so, then do some more digging, and write probing questions, beginning with “Why…? What if…?  How…?”  The goal is to have detailed answers, not a simple yes or no.

Sample Topic and Probing Questions

Undergraduate class: POL 370--Political Violence

Topic of interest: terrorism

Background information: “ Terrorism is  the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).”

My questions upon reading the background information:

• What motivates someone to engage in terrorist activity? 
• How can we find out what motivates people to engage in terrorist activity?

Develop Your Research Question

It’s time to move beyond background research into the literature.  Start by first identifying the key scholars within your topic area, and read what they have to say.  What questions do they have?  How do they go about answering them?

Go back to your original questions and add to them or refine them based on the latest research you’ve done.  Write down some persuasive claims that you’d like to make about your topic.  Keep in mind that a good research question will have more than one possible answer.  Be careful not to ask the exact same questions or statements as the scholars you’ve read; you want to take an original stance on the topic.

Bad Sample Question:   What motivates terrorists to engage in terrorist activity?  (too broad)

Good Sample Question:   Why did the Northern Irish who joined the IRA during the Troubles choose to employ terrorist tactics in their fight for independence?  (narrow enough, places the topic in context)

Useful Links

• Writing Strong Research Questions (opens in a new window)
• Generate Topic Ideas (opens in a new window)
• Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 2:11 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.waketech.edu/claireresearchguide

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• Questionnaire Design | Methods, Question Types & Examples

Questionnaire Design | Methods, Question Types & Examples

Published on 6 May 2022 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on 10 October 2022.

A questionnaire is a list of questions or items used to gather data from respondents about their attitudes, experiences, or opinions. Questionnaires can be used to collect quantitative and/or qualitative information.

Questionnaires are commonly used in market research as well as in the social and health sciences. For example, a company may ask for feedback about a recent customer service experience, or psychology researchers may investigate health risk perceptions using questionnaires.

Table of contents

Questionnaires vs surveys, questionnaire methods, open-ended vs closed-ended questions, question wording, question order, step-by-step guide to design, frequently asked questions about questionnaire design.

A survey is a research method where you collect and analyse data from a group of people. A questionnaire is a specific tool or instrument for collecting the data.

Designing a questionnaire means creating valid and reliable questions that address your research objectives, placing them in a useful order, and selecting an appropriate method for administration.

But designing a questionnaire is only one component of survey research. Survey research also involves defining the population you’re interested in, choosing an appropriate sampling method , administering questionnaires, data cleaning and analysis, and interpretation.

Sampling is important in survey research because you’ll often aim to generalise your results to the population. Gather data from a sample that represents the range of views in the population for externally valid results. There will always be some differences between the population and the sample, but minimising these will help you avoid sampling bias .

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered . Self-administered questionnaires are more common because they are easy to implement and inexpensive, but researcher-administered questionnaires allow deeper insights.

Self-administered questionnaires

Self-administered questionnaires can be delivered online or in paper-and-pen formats, in person or by post. All questions are standardised so that all respondents receive the same questions with identical wording.

Self-administered questionnaires can be:

• Cost-effective
• Easy to administer for small and large groups
• Anonymous and suitable for sensitive topics

But they may also be:

• Unsuitable for people with limited literacy or verbal skills
• Susceptible to a nonreponse bias (most people invited may not complete the questionnaire)
• Biased towards people who volunteer because impersonal survey requests often go ignored

Researcher-administered questionnaires

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in person, or online between researchers and respondents.

Researcher-administered questionnaires can:

• Help you ensure the respondents are representative of your target audience
• Allow clarifications of ambiguous or unclear questions and answers
• Have high response rates because it’s harder to refuse an interview when personal attention is given to respondents

But researcher-administered questionnaires can be limiting in terms of resources. They are:

• Costly and time-consuming to perform
• More difficult to analyse if you have qualitative responses
• Likely to contain experimenter bias or demand characteristics
• Likely to encourage social desirability bias in responses because of a lack of anonymity

Your questionnaire can include open-ended or closed-ended questions, or a combination of both.

Using closed-ended questions limits your responses, while open-ended questions enable a broad range of answers. You’ll need to balance these considerations with your available time and resources.

Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. Closed-ended questions are best for collecting data on categorical or quantitative variables.

Categorical variables can be nominal or ordinal. Quantitative variables can be interval or ratio. Understanding the type of variable and level of measurement means you can perform appropriate statistical analyses for generalisable results.

Examples of closed-ended questions for different variables

Nominal variables include categories that can’t be ranked, such as race or ethnicity. This includes binary or dichotomous categories.

It’s best to include categories that cover all possible answers and are mutually exclusive. There should be no overlap between response items.

In binary or dichotomous questions, you’ll give respondents only two options to choose from.

White Black or African American American Indian or Alaska Native Asian Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

Ordinal variables include categories that can be ranked. Consider how wide or narrow a range you’ll include in your response items, and their relevance to your respondents.

Likert-type questions collect ordinal data using rating scales with five or seven points.

When you have four or more Likert-type questions, you can treat the composite data as quantitative data on an interval scale . Intelligence tests, psychological scales, and personality inventories use multiple Likert-type questions to collect interval data.

With interval or ratio data, you can apply strong statistical hypothesis tests to address your research aims.

Pros and cons of closed-ended questions

Well-designed closed-ended questions are easy to understand and can be answered quickly. However, you might still miss important answers that are relevant to respondents. An incomplete set of response items may force some respondents to pick the closest alternative to their true answer. These types of questions may also miss out on valuable detail.

To solve these problems, you can make questions partially closed-ended, and include an open-ended option where respondents can fill in their own answer.

Open-ended questions

Open-ended, or long-form, questions allow respondents to give answers in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered. For example, respondents may want to answer ‘multiracial’ for the question on race rather than selecting from a restricted list.

• How do you feel about open science?
• How would you describe your personality?
• In your opinion, what is the biggest obstacle to productivity in remote work?

Open-ended questions have a few downsides.

They require more time and effort from respondents, which may deter them from completing the questionnaire.

For researchers, understanding and summarising responses to these questions can take a lot of time and resources. You’ll need to develop a systematic coding scheme to categorise answers, and you may also need to involve other researchers in data analysis for high reliability .

Question wording can influence your respondents’ answers, especially if the language is unclear, ambiguous, or biased. Good questions need to be understood by all respondents in the same way ( reliable ) and measure exactly what you’re interested in ( valid ).

Use clear language

You should design questions with your target audience in mind. Consider their familiarity with your questionnaire topics and language and tailor your questions to them.

For readability and clarity, avoid jargon or overly complex language. Don’t use double negatives because they can be harder to understand.

Use balanced framing

Respondents often answer in different ways depending on the question framing. Positive frames are interpreted as more neutral than negative frames and may encourage more socially desirable answers.

Use a mix of both positive and negative frames to avoid bias , and ensure that your question wording is balanced wherever possible.

Unbalanced questions focus on only one side of an argument. Respondents may be less likely to oppose the question if it is framed in a particular direction. It’s best practice to provide a counterargument within the question as well.

Avoid leading questions

Leading questions guide respondents towards answering in specific ways, even if that’s not how they truly feel, by explicitly or implicitly providing them with extra information.

It’s best to keep your questions short and specific to your topic of interest.

• The average daily work commute in the US takes 54.2 minutes and costs $29 per day. Since 2020, working from home has saved many employees time and money. Do you favour flexible work-from-home policies even after it’s safe to return to offices?
• Experts agree that a well-balanced diet provides sufficient vitamins and minerals, and multivitamins and supplements are not necessary or effective. Do you agree or disagree that multivitamins are helpful for balanced nutrition?

Keep your questions focused

Ask about only one idea at a time and avoid double-barrelled questions. Double-barrelled questions ask about more than one item at a time, which can confuse respondents.

This question could be difficult to answer for respondents who feel strongly about the right to clean drinking water but not high-speed internet. They might only answer about the topic they feel passionate about or provide a neutral answer instead – but neither of these options capture their true answers.

Instead, you should ask two separate questions to gauge respondents’ opinions.

Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree

Do you agree or disagree that the government should be responsible for providing high-speed internet to everyone?

You can organise the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex. Alternatively, you can randomise the question order between respondents.

Logical flow

Using a logical flow to your question order means starting with simple questions, such as behavioural or opinion questions, and ending with more complex, sensitive, or controversial questions.

The question order that you use can significantly affect the responses by priming them in specific directions. Question order effects, or context effects, occur when earlier questions influence the responses to later questions, reducing the validity of your questionnaire.

While demographic questions are usually unaffected by order effects, questions about opinions and attitudes are more susceptible to them.

• How knowledgeable are you about Joe Biden’s executive orders in his first 100 days?
• Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Joe Biden is managing the economy?
• Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president?

It’s important to minimise order effects because they can be a source of systematic error or bias in your study.

Randomisation

Randomisation involves presenting individual respondents with the same questionnaire but with different question orders.

When you use randomisation, order effects will be minimised in your dataset. But a randomised order may also make it harder for respondents to process your questionnaire. Some questions may need more cognitive effort, while others are easier to answer, so a random order could require more time or mental capacity for respondents to switch between questions.

Follow this step-by-step guide to design your questionnaire.

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

The first step of designing a questionnaire is determining your aims.

• What topics or experiences are you studying?
• What specifically do you want to find out?
• Is a self-report questionnaire an appropriate tool for investigating this topic?

Once you’ve specified your research aims, you can operationalise your variables of interest into questionnaire items. Operationalising concepts means turning them from abstract ideas into concrete measurements. Every question needs to address a defined need and have a clear purpose.

Step 2: Use questions that are suitable for your sample

Create appropriate questions by taking the perspective of your respondents. Consider their language proficiency and available time and energy when designing your questionnaire.

• Are the respondents familiar with the language and terms used in your questions?
• Would any of the questions insult, confuse, or embarrass them?
• Do the response items for any closed-ended questions capture all possible answers?
• Are the response items mutually exclusive?
• Do the respondents have time to respond to open-ended questions?

Consider all possible options for responses to closed-ended questions. From a respondent’s perspective, a lack of response options reflecting their point of view or true answer may make them feel alienated or excluded. In turn, they’ll become disengaged or inattentive to the rest of the questionnaire.

Step 3: Decide on your questionnaire length and question order

Once you have your questions, make sure that the length and order of your questions are appropriate for your sample.

If respondents are not being incentivised or compensated, keep your questionnaire short and easy to answer. Otherwise, your sample may be biased with only highly motivated respondents completing the questionnaire.

Decide on your question order based on your aims and resources. Use a logical flow if your respondents have limited time or if you cannot randomise questions. Randomising questions helps you avoid bias, but it can take more complex statistical analysis to interpret your data.

Step 4: Pretest your questionnaire

When you have a complete list of questions, you’ll need to pretest it to make sure what you’re asking is always clear and unambiguous. Pretesting helps you catch any errors or points of confusion before performing your study.

Ask friends, classmates, or members of your target audience to complete your questionnaire using the same method you’ll use for your research. Find out if any questions were particularly difficult to answer or if the directions were unclear or inconsistent, and make changes as necessary.

If you have the resources, running a pilot study will help you test the validity and reliability of your questionnaire. A pilot study is a practice run of the full study, and it includes sampling, data collection , and analysis.

You can find out whether your procedures are unfeasible or susceptible to bias and make changes in time, but you can’t test a hypothesis with this type of study because it’s usually statistically underpowered .

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analysing data from people using questionnaires.

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. These questions are easier to answer quickly.

Open-ended or long-form questions allow respondents to answer in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviours. It is made up of four or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with five or seven possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

You can organise the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex, or randomly between respondents. A logical flow helps respondents process the questionnaire easier and quicker, but it may lead to bias. Randomisation can minimise the bias from order effects.

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered.

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in person, or online between researchers and respondents. You can gain deeper insights by clarifying questions for respondents or asking follow-up questions.

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The Effects of Climate Change

The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

• We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves.
• Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.

Earth Will Continue to Warm and the Effects Will Be Profound

Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.

Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global climate change are now occurring, such as sea ice loss, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.

The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the United Nations body established to assess the science related to climate change — modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes are irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.

Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades, mainly due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report, published in 2021, found that human emissions of heat-trapping gases have already warmed the climate by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since 1850-1900. 1 The global average temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) within the next few decades. These changes will affect all regions of Earth.

The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities. More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more climate extremes and widespread damaging effects across our planet. However, those future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So, if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.

The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.

Here are some of the expected effects of global climate change on the United States, according to the Third and Fourth National Climate Assessment Reports:

Future effects of global climate change in the United States:

U.S. Sea Level Likely to Rise 1 to 6.6 Feet by 2100

Global sea level has risen about 8 inches (0.2 meters) since reliable record-keeping began in 1880. By 2100, scientists project that it will rise at least another foot (0.3 meters), but possibly as high as 6.6 feet (2 meters) in a high-emissions scenario. Sea level is rising because of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms. Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Climate Changes Will Continue Through This Century and Beyond

Global climate is projected to continue warming over this century and beyond. Image credit: Khagani Hasanov, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Hurricanes Will Become Stronger and More Intense

Scientists project that hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates will increase as the climate continues to warm. Image credit: NASA

More Droughts and Heat Waves

Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves (periods of abnormally hot weather lasting days to weeks) are projected to become more intense, and cold waves less intense and less frequent. Image credit: NOAA

Longer Wildfire Season

Warming temperatures have extended and intensified wildfire season in the West, where long-term drought in the region has heightened the risk of fires. Scientists estimate that human-caused climate change has already doubled the area of forest burned in recent decades. By around 2050, the amount of land consumed by wildfires in Western states is projected to further increase by two to six times. Even in traditionally rainy regions like the Southeast, wildfires are projected to increase by about 30%.

Changes in Precipitation Patterns

Climate change is having an uneven effect on precipitation (rain and snow) in the United States, with some locations experiencing increased precipitation and flooding, while others suffer from drought. On average, more winter and spring precipitation is projected for the northern United States, and less for the Southwest, over this century. Image credit: Marvin Nauman/FEMA

Frost-Free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen

The length of the frost-free season, and the corresponding growing season, has been increasing since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western United States. Across the United States, the growing season is projected to continue to lengthen, which will affect ecosystems and agriculture.

Global Temperatures Will Continue to Rise

Summer of 2023 was Earth's hottest summer on record, 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.23 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record and 2.1 degrees F (1.2 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. Image credit: NASA

Arctic Is Very Likely to Become Ice-Free

Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue decreasing, and the Arctic Ocean will very likely become essentially ice-free in late summer if current projections hold. This change is expected to occur before mid-century.

U.S. Regional Effects

Climate change is bringing different types of challenges to each region of the country. Some of the current and future impacts are summarized below. These findings are from the Third 3 and Fourth 4 National Climate Assessment Reports, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program .

• Northeast. Heat waves, heavy downpours, and sea level rise pose increasing challenges to many aspects of life in the Northeast. Infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised. Farmers can explore new crop options, but these adaptations are not cost- or risk-free. Moreover, adaptive capacity , which varies throughout the region, could be overwhelmed by a changing climate. Many states and cities are beginning to incorporate climate change into their planning.
• Northwest. Changes in the timing of peak flows in rivers and streams are reducing water supplies and worsening competing demands for water. Sea level rise, erosion, flooding, risks to infrastructure, and increasing ocean acidity pose major threats. Increasing wildfire incidence and severity, heat waves, insect outbreaks, and tree diseases are causing widespread forest die-off.
• Southeast. Sea level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to the region’s economy and environment. Extreme heat will affect health, energy, agriculture, and more. Decreased water availability will have economic and environmental impacts.
• Midwest. Extreme heat, heavy downpours, and flooding will affect infrastructure, health, agriculture, forestry, transportation, air and water quality, and more. Climate change will also worsen a range of risks to the Great Lakes.
• Southwest. Climate change has caused increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks. In turn, these changes have made wildfires more numerous and severe. The warming climate has also caused a decline in water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, and triggered heat-related health impacts in cities. In coastal areas, flooding and erosion are additional concerns.

1. IPCC 2021, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis , the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

2. IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

3. USGCRP 2014, Third Climate Assessment .

4. USGCRP 2017, Fourth Climate Assessment .

Related Resources

A Degree of Difference

So, the Earth's average temperature has increased about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. What's the big deal?

What’s the difference between climate change and global warming?

“Global warming” refers to the long-term warming of the planet. “Climate change” encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet, including rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.

Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries.

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Research Identifies Characteristics of Cities That Would Support Young People’s Mental Health

Survey responses from global panel that included young people provide insights into what would make cities mental health-friendly for youth

As cities around the world continue to draw young people for work, education, and social opportunities, a new study identifies characteristics that would support young urban dwellers’ mental health. The findings, based on survey responses from a global panel that included adolescents and young adults, provide a set of priorities that city planners can adopt to build urban environments that are safe, equitable, and inclusive. 

To determine city characteristics that could bolster youth mental health, researchers administered an initial survey to a panel of more than 400, including young people and a multidisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and advocates. Through two subsequent surveys, participants prioritized six characteristics that would support young city dwellers’ mental health: opportunities to build life skills; age-friendly environments that accept young people’s feelings and values; free and safe public spaces where young people can connect; employment and job security; interventions that address the social determinants of health; and urban design with youth input and priorities in mind. 

The paper was published online February 21 in  Nature .

The study’s lead author is Pamela Collins, MD, MPH, chair of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Mental Health. The study was conducted while Collins was on the faculty at the University of Washington. The paper was written by an international, interdisciplinary team, including citiesRISE, a global nonprofit that works to transform mental health policy and practice in cities, especially for young people.

Cities have long been a draw for young people. Research by UNICEF projects that cities will be home to 70 percent of the world’s children by 2050. Although urban environments influence a broad range of health outcomes, both positive and negative, their impacts manifest unequally. Mental disorders are the leading causes of disability among 10- to 24-year-olds globally. Exposure to urban inequality, violence, lack of green space, and fear of displacement disproportionately affects marginalized groups, increasing risk for poor mental health among urban youth.

“Right now, we are living with the largest population of adolescents in the world’s history, so this is an incredibly important group of people for global attention,” says Collins. “Investing in young people is an investment in their present well-being and future potential, and it’s an investment in the next generation—the children they will bear.” 

Data collection for the study began in April 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. To capture its possible impacts, researchers added an open-ended survey question asking panelists how the pandemic influenced their perceptions of youth mental health in cities. The panelists reported that the pandemic either shed new light on the inequality and uneven distribution of resources experienced by marginalized communities in urban areas, or confirmed their preconceptions of how social vulnerability exacerbates health outcomes. 

For their study, the researchers recruited a panel of more than 400 individuals from 53 countries, including 327 young people ages 14 to 25, from a cross-section of fields, including education, advocacy, adolescent health, mental health and substance use, urban planning and development, data and technology, housing, and criminal justice. The researchers administered three sequential surveys to panelists beginning in April 2020 that asked panelists to identify elements of urban life that would support mental health for young people.

The top 37 characteristics were then grouped into six domains: intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, organizational, policy, and environment. Within these domains, panelists ranked characteristics based on immediacy of impact on youth mental health, ability to help youth thrive, and ease or feasibility of implementation. 

Taken together, the characteristics identified in the study provide a comprehensive set of priorities that policymakers and urban planners can use as a guide to improve young city dwellers' mental health. Among them: Youth-focused mental health and educational services could support young people’s emotional development and self-efficacy. Investment in spaces that facilitate social connection may help alleviate young people’s experiences of isolation and support their need for healthy, trusting relationships. Creating employment opportunities and job security could undo the economic losses that young people and their families experienced during the pandemic and help cities retain residents after a COVID-era exodus from urban centers.  

The findings suggest that creating a mental health-friendly city for young people requires investments across multiple interconnected sectors like transportation, housing, employment, health, and urban planning, with a central focus on social and economic equity. They also require urban planning policy approaches that commit to systemic and sustained collaboration, without magnifying existing privileges through initiatives like gentrification and developing green spaces at the expense of marginalized communities in need of affordable housing.

The authors say this framework underscores that responses by cities should include young people in the planning and design of interventions that directly impact their mental health and well-being. 

“ Making cities mental health friendly for adolescents and young adults ” was co-authored by an international, interdisciplinary team of 31 researchers led by the University of Washington Consortium for Global Mental Health, Urban@UW, the University of Melbourne, and citiesRISE. Author funding is listed in the Acknowledgements section of the paper.

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Designing A Questionnaire

Ng chirk jenn.

MMed(FamMed Singapore), Department of Primary Care Medicine, University of Malaya

In a survey, the researcher uses a questionnaire to gather information from the respondents to answer the research questions. A questionnaire is a very convenient way of collecting information from a large number of people within a period of time. Hence, the design of the questionnaire is of utmost importance to ensure accurate data is collected so that the results are interpretable and generalisable. A bad questionnaire renders the results uninterpretable, or worse, may lead to erroneous conclusions.

A survey can come in many forms: postal survey, telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews and internet surveys. Each type of survey requires a slightly different design. A self-administered questionnaire (e.g. postal survey) should have very clear instructions and questions, follow a logical order and avoid complex filtering. The respondents are more likely to answer truthfully without prompting from an interviewer. On the other hand, in an interviewer-administered questionnaire (e.g. face-to-face interview or telephone interview), the questions can be more complex as they can be clarified by the interviewers. However, the presence of an interviewer may “pressurise” the respondents to give “appropriate” rather than truthful answers.

WHAT IS A GOOD QUESTIONNAIRE?

A good questionnaire should be valid, reliable, clear, interesting and succinct.

A valid questionnaire should ask what it intends to ask, i.e. the questions should be phrased in such a way that the respondent understands the objective of the question. To achieve this, the questionnaire should be reviewed by the “content expert” during the pilot test (e.g. if the target respondent is a diabetic patient, then a diabetic patient should comment whether he understands the questionnaire). Any uncertainties and queries should be clarified till the question is clearly understood.

A reliable questionnaire should yield the same answer if the same question is posed to the respondent repeatedly in a short span of time. This can be achieved by performing a “test-retest”, i.e. administer the same questionnaire to the respondent a second time and check for consistency of the answer. Any discrepancy in the answers could be due to lack of clarity of the questions and this should be reviewed and rephrased.

Interesting

An interesting questionnaire is more likely to be completed by the respondent and hence yields a better response rate. This requires the researcher to put some thoughts into asking questions that are relevant to the respondent and in a logical sequence.

A succinct questionnaire asks questions that aim to answer only the research objectives. Any questions beyond the scope of the research should be excluded. It is common for researchers to “cast the net wider” so that they will collect more data, regardless of whether these data are important or not. This usually happens when the researcher has not properly thought through the research objectives. It runs the risk of asking too many questions and the questionnaire runs into many pages.

HOW TO DESIGN A GOOD QUESTIONNAIRE?

Developing a conceptual framework.

The first step of designing of a good questionnaire is to construct a conceptual framework. The researcher needs to be very clear about his research questions and what “dependent” and “independent” factors he intends to investigate. Consider this research question: “What is the health-seeking behaviour of parents whose children have upper respiratory tract infection, and what are the associated factors?” I would develop a conceptual framework ( Figure 1 , Page 35) based on literature review, established theoretical framework and discussion with experts in that field. By creating the framework, the researcher can now ask questions regarding “parental health-seeking behaviour” (dependent variable) and associated factors e.g. education level, household income, age of child, etc. (independent variables). The importance of this framework is to ensure the research covers all relevant variables and any irrelevant variables can be excluded. This will answer the commonly asked questions: “Did I miss any important questions in the questionnaire?”, “Should I include/exclude this particular question?”

Conceptual Model of Self Care (Simplified)

Asking the “right” questions

Now that you have developed the conceptual framework and you know exactly what questions you want to ask, it is time for you to design the questions in such a way that it is valid and reliable. The researchers have to brainstorm and come up with the preliminary questions.

Close- vs open-ended questions

These questions can be in the form of “close-ended” or “open-ended” questions ( Table 1a ). “Close-ended” questions provide options to the respondents and require them to choose one or more items from the list. “Open-ended” questions allow the respondent to express their opinions freely and they are not restricted by the options. The former is preferred if the range of answers are well known and the options are limited; the latter is preferred if the answer options are multiple and unknown. The answers to the open-ended questions require re-grouping before analysis.

Options/choices

The options available for each question should be as exhaustive as possible. This will ensure the respondent can find an option which best suits his answer. In order to determine the possible options, the researcher needs to brainstorm, review related published research, discuss with experts and if necessary, conduct a focus group discussion among the target respondents. To allow other possible options, the researcher can include an “Other: please specify ________” category as one of the options.

When assessing factual knowledge, it is important to include “Don’t know” as one of the responses as not all respondents may know the answer to the question. By not providing the option, the researcher is “forcing” the respondent to make a choice by guessing.

In a questionnaire which has many parts, some of which need not be answered by the respondent, filtering is used to guide the respondent to answer only the relevant questions. ( Table 1b ) However, you should avoid using too much filtering as this may confuse the respondents and make the questionnaire complicated.

Order of questions

The order of the questions should flow in a logical sequence. Start with simple questions before moving to more complex questions. Some prefer to start with the socio-demography of the respondents while others will leave it to the last as it involves more personal questions such as household income, education level and religion. However, this depends on the how forth-coming the target population is. Sometimes, it helps by explaining to the respondent the reason for asking a personal question or by making a general statement to normalise the “sensitive” question. ( Table 1c )

Likert scale

In questions which involve assessing attitudes or giving opinions, a scale with a range of responses is preferred to a yes/no answer. Likert scale (usually 5-point or 7-point) is a commonly used method. ( Table 1d ) It provides a measure of strength for a particular attitude or belief. It is possible to calculate mean scores for any given responses to statements (item scores)

Avoid double-barrelled questions

Another common mistake is asking a “double-barrelled” question. Avoid asking two things in one question ( Table 1e ) This will lead to difficulty in interpreting the responses when analysing the data.

Avoid ambiguous questions

Be as specific as possible when asking a question. For example, terms such as “frequent”, “always” and “often” may mean different things to different people. ( Table 1f ) Keep questionnaire items short, preferably less than 20 words. When scrutinising through the questions, ask yourself, “Is this question clear? Can it be more specific?”

Design the questionnaire with analysis in mind

When designing a questionnaire, it is crucial to pre-empt what kind of method will be used to analyse the data collected. Take for example, age. If the objective of asking the age is to find out the mean age of the participants, then an exact age should be captured (e.g. “What is your age? (at your last birthday): ______ years). On the other hand, if you are going to categorise them according to different age groups during the analysis, then you may want to structure the question according to different age categories (e.g. “What is your age? (at your last birthday): <18, 18-29, 30-50, etc.) If you are uncertain of what analysis you will be performing, it is always advisable to collect raw data, rather than to categorise them in the beginning. This will help to avoid problems with analysis after data collection and ensure that all data collected are relevant and usable. One practical way to do that is to draw up a “question-analysis” table in advance. ( Table 2 )

Translation

A respondent should answer a questionnaire in a language which he or she is most proficient in. In a multi-lingual society like Malaysia, translating the questionnaire into different languages has become a “standard procedure”, especially for self-administered questionnaire involving the general population or patients. This is a crucial step because inaccurate translation of the questions or responses will result in collecting different information for the same question. This will lead to erroneous results and conclusions.

To avoid this, a “translate-back-translate” method is used. The researcher or a translator has to translate the questionnaire from English to Malay, and another independent person, who is unaware of the English questionnaire, will back-translate the Malay questionnaire to English again. The researchers (usually three or more people who are proficient in both languages) will then compare the original English questionnaire with the back-translated English questionnaire for any discrepancy, which may suggest inaccurate translation of the Malay questionnaire. These discrepancies will be discussed and the researchers will reach a consensus on the final translation.

The final “touch-up” of the questionnaire is important because the “look” of the questionnaire may decide whether the respondent is going to fill it up. This is especially relevant for postal surveys. The title should be highlighted and it should reflect the main objective of the research. If possible, divide the questionnaire into sections according to the content (e.g. boxes with bold headings) and it should flow smoothly from one section to another with appropriate filtering. If your respondents involve older persons, bigger font size should be used. Finally, a cover letter stating the objective of your study, your affiliations, and, if appropriate, ensuring confidentiality and how you are going to use the information you have collected

Pilot test is a crucial step in the design of questionnaire before data collection begins. It will help to detect flaws in the questionnaire in terms of content, grammar and format. First, ask you colleagues, family or friends to comment on the questionnaire. This will pick up any mistakes in terms of content, grammar and format. This should be followed by asking the potential respondents to answer the questionnaire and provide their feedback. For those questions which you feel may be confusing or sensitive, it is important to ask the respondents to comment specifically during the pilot test.

CONCLUSIONS

A good questionnaire should be valid, reliable, clear, succinct and interesting. It is important to design the questionnaire based on a conceptual framework, scrutinise each question for relevance and clarity, and think of the analysis you are going to perform at the end of the day. A final touch-up will make a difference in the response rate and always pilot-test the questionnaire to perfect the questionnaire. Now you are ready to collect the data!

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Regions & Countries

Most americans favor legalizing marijuana for medical, recreational use, legalizing recreational marijuana viewed as good for local economies; mixed views of impact on drug use, community safety.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand the public’s views about the legalization of marijuana in the United States. For this analysis, we surveyed 5,140 adults from Jan. 16 to Jan. 21, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report and its methodology .

As more states pass laws legalizing marijuana for recreational use , Americans continue to favor legalization of both medical and recreational use of the drug.

An overwhelming share of U.S. adults (88%) say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use.

Nearly six-in-ten Americans (57%) say that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational purposes, while roughly a third (32%) say that marijuana should be legal for medical use only.

Just 11% of Americans say that the drug should not be legal at all.

Opinions about marijuana legalization have changed little over the past five years, according to the Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 16-21, 2024, among 5,14o adults.

The impact of legalizing marijuana for recreational use

While a majority of Americans continue to say marijuana should be legal , there are varying views about the impacts of recreational legalization.

About half of Americans (52%) say that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana is good for local economies; just 17% think it is bad and 29% say it has no impact.

More adults also say legalizing marijuana for recreational use makes the criminal justice system more fair (42%) than less fair (18%); 38% say it has no impact.

However, Americans have mixed views on the impact of legalizing marijuana for recreational use on:

• Use of other drugs: About as many say it increases (29%) as say it decreases (27%) the use of other drugs, like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine (42% say it has no impact).
• Community safety: More Americans say legalizing recreational marijuana makes communities less safe (34%) than say it makes them safer (21%); 44% say it has no impact.

Partisan differences on impact of recreational use of marijuana

There are deep partisan divisions regarding the impact of marijuana legalization for recreational use.

Majorities of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say legalizing recreational marijuana is good for local economies (64% say this) and makes the criminal justice system fairer (58%).

Fewer Republicans and Republican leaners say legalization for recreational use has a positive effect on local economies (41%) and the criminal justice system (27%).

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to cite downsides from legalizing recreational marijuana:

• 42% of Republicans say it increases the use of other drugs, like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, compared with just 17% of Democrats.
• 48% of Republicans say it makes communities less safe, more than double the share of Democrats (21%) who say this.

Demographic, partisan differences in views of marijuana legalization

Sizable age and partisan differences persist on the issue of marijuana legalization though small shares of adults across demographic groups are completely opposed to it.

Older adults are far less likely than younger adults to favor marijuana legalization.

This is particularly the case among adults ages 75 and older: 31% say marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use.

By comparison, half of adults between the ages of 65 and 74 say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, and larger shares in younger age groups say the same.

Republicans continue to be less supportive than Democrats of legalizing marijuana for both legal and recreational use: 42% of Republicans favor legalizing marijuana for both purposes, compared with 72% of Democrats.

There continue to be ideological differences within each party:

• 34% of conservative Republicans say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, compared with a 57% majority of moderate and liberal Republicans.
• 62% of conservative and moderate Democrats say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, while an overwhelming majority of liberal Democrats (84%) say this.

Views of marijuana legalization vary by age within both parties

Along with differences by party and age, there are also age differences within each party on the issue.

A 57% majority of Republicans ages 18 to 29 favor making marijuana legal for medical and recreational use, compared with 52% among those ages 30 to 49 and much smaller shares of older Republicans.

Still, wide majorities of Republicans in all age groups favor legalizing marijuana at least for medical use. Among those ages 65 and older, just 20% say marijuana should not be legal even for medical purposes.

While majorities of Democrats across all age groups support legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use, older Democrats are less likely to say this.

About half of Democrats ages 75 and older (53%) say marijuana should be legal for both purposes, but much larger shares of younger Democrats say the same (including 81% of Democrats ages 18 to 29). Still, only 7% of Democrats ages 65 and older think marijuana should not be legalized even for medical use, similar to the share of all other Democrats who say this.

Views of the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana among racial and ethnic groups

Substantial shares of Americans across racial and ethnic groups say when marijuana is legal for recreational use, it has a more positive than negative impact on the economy and criminal justice system.

About half of White (52%), Black (53%) and Hispanic (51%) adults say legalizing recreational marijuana is good for local economies. A slightly smaller share of Asian adults (46%) say the same.

Criminal justice

Across racial and ethnic groups, about four-in-ten say that recreational marijuana being legal makes the criminal justice system fairer, with smaller shares saying it would make it less fair.

However, there are wider racial differences on questions regarding the impact of recreational marijuana on the use of other drugs and the safety of communities.

Use of other drugs

Nearly half of Black adults (48%) say recreational marijuana legalization doesn’t have an effect on the use of drugs like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. Another 32% in this group say it decreases the use of these drugs and 18% say it increases their use.

In contrast, Hispanic adults are slightly more likely to say legal marijuana increases the use of these other drugs (39%) than to say it decreases this use (30%); 29% say it has no impact.

Among White adults, the balance of opinion is mixed: 28% say marijuana legalization increases the use of other drugs and 25% say it decreases their use (45% say it has no impact). Views among Asian adults are also mixed, though a smaller share (31%) say legalization has no impact on the use of other drugs.

Community safety

Hispanic and Asian adults also are more likely to say marijuana’s legalization makes communities less safe: 41% of Hispanic adults and 46% of Asian adults say this, compared with 34% of White adults and 24% of Black adults.

Wide age gap on views of impact of legalizing recreational marijuana

Young Americans view the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in more positive terms compared with their older counterparts.

Clear majorities of adults under 30 say it is good for local economies (71%) and that it makes the criminal justice system fairer (59%).

By comparison, a third of Americans ages 65 and older say legalizing the recreational use of marijuana is good for local economies; about as many (32%) say it makes the criminal justice system more fair.

There also are sizable differences in opinion by age about how legalizing recreational marijuana affects the use of other drugs and the safety of communities.

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Table of contents, most americans now live in a legal marijuana state – and most have at least one dispensary in their county, 7 facts about americans and marijuana, americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, clear majorities of black americans favor marijuana legalization, easing of criminal penalties, religious americans are less likely to endorse legal marijuana for recreational use, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .