{"id":4410,"date":"2012-07-13T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T23:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=4410"},"modified":"2012-07-13T18:44:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T08:44:48","slug":"ensure-your-surveys-give-enough-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/07\/ensure-your-surveys-give-enough-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Ensure your surveys give enough options"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I answered a brief survey from a Government body &#8211; correction, I tried to answer a brief survey but the questions stopped me.<\/p>\n<p>For a series of items, you had the choice of yes (I want to get this) or no (I don&#8217;t want to get this).\u00a0 And you had to answer yes at least one to have your survey accepted.<\/p>\n<p>However, for three of the items I already have them. So my answer is neither yes nor no, leaving me in a quandary about finishing their survey.<\/p>\n<p>I choose to answer no because I didn&#8217;t want duplicates but I wonder how much that has skewed their results? And how many other people in my position chose no?<\/p>\n<h2>When writing surveys and forms<\/h2>\n<p>It is really important to think about your questions from every angle to <a title=\"Survey\/feedback questions\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/05\/surveyfeedback-questions\/\">be sure people can complete your survey\/form<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Making your questions easy to answer<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>keeps people happy rather than frustrated<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Make your website more accessible\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/07\/make-your-website-more-accessible\/\">makes your page more accessible <\/a><\/li>\n<li>means the <a title=\"Improving your surveys and questionnaires\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/07\/improving-your-surveys-and-questionnaires\/\">response you gather will be meaningful<\/a> rather than nonsense because people make up answers to get through<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s especially worth thinking about if you have made the answers black or white &#8211; can you be sure no one will want to answer grey?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4428\" style=\"width: 111px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/limited_choices_exclude.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4428\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4428\" title=\"limited_choices_exclude\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/limited_choices_exclude.gif\" alt=\"exclude people if options are too few\" width=\"101\" height=\"112\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4428\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assuming only two currencies definitely excludes some people<\/p><\/div>\n<p>If you&#8217;re asking for a gender, under 18\/over 18 or in business\/not in business, there is a clear either or response. However, as soon as you have a less concrete option, be careful to include that in your possible responses.<\/p>\n<p>While &#8216;other&#8217; or &#8216;unknown&#8217; may seem weak answers, they do at least give people the option of completing your questions without getting stuck or making up answers.<\/p>\n<p>And a &#8216;both&#8217; or &#8216;all of the above&#8217; answers give a lot more choice, too.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I answered a brief survey from a Government body &#8211; correction, I tried to answer a brief survey but the questions stopped me. For a series of items, you had the choice of yes (I want to get this) or no (I don&#8217;t want to get this).\u00a0 And you had to answer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,1425],"tags":[1098,1533,238,143],"class_list":["post-4410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-writing-examples","category-business-communications","tag-forms","tag-options","tag-questions","tag-survey"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4437,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410\/revisions\/4437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}