Case Studies

Questionnaires are an inexpensive research tool used by a whole host of organizations in private companies and the government departments to get feedback from customers, consumers, or constituents depending on who is in charge of the questionnaire. The feedback can inform party policies or in a business the feedback can inform the business roadmap. 

It is used in gathering quantitative and qualitative data, so it is a useful tool if you are selecting one data set or going for a mixed method approach. This is the greatest differentiation between a questionnaire and a survey. With a survey it is better to be plain and direct to collect objective quantitative data, the only downside is the lack of depth that the data has. With Powform you can add a text area component which gives the respondents an opportunity to discuss their answers in greater depth.  

What are you trying to discover?

Arguably the most important step is what do you want to find out the purpose of this questionnaire, they are usually designed around what is known as a problem statement. There could be an issue with customer care that needs to be resolved or a dip in sales that needs to be addressed, fixing this problem should be helped by obtaining useful data from your questionnaire. The questions should generally start as broad before narrowing down, which gives time for the respondent to discuss their baseline knowledge and getting warmed up for “harder” questions. 

The benefits of the questionnaire 

Your Powform questionnaire app will be sent to respondents and contains specific, clear-cut directions due to Powform’s high level of customisation. The persons charged with the collection of data don’t need to offer further explanation as all the instructions can be built into the app. 

The questionnaire is anonymous, you will only need an email address from the respondent so you can send them a link. The respondents can say whatever they like and do not have to feel pressure to change their opinion to fit everyone else's. 

It is possible to cover a large population spread over a large territory, which is difficult to do with qualitative methods such as interviews. It saves the researcher time, energy, and money. They can be tending to editing and writing their research, instead of trying to get respondents into a room for a focus group or face to face interview. 

Subjective Questions 

Unless it is important to your research to get the opinion of the user or targeted group, subjective or open-ended questions should be avoided. Everyone sees the world differently and the answer they give might not be useful to your study, unless you are looking for a qualitative study where subjective experiences are useful and stick to closed-end questions. It will be difficult to quantify, it is possible through techniques such as thematic analysis but it is very time consuming and not as precise as a quantitative method. It is also seen that people start narrating their experiences in open-ended questions which does not add much value to the research being conducted. It also takes a lot of space, time and effort so it should be avoided.

Multiple questions in question should be avoided 

One question should have one theme and any more than that can have negative impacts on yoru results, asking a respondent about two different things will frustrate them. If the respondent cannot skip this question then they might just abandon the questionnaire altogether. If more than one question needs to be asked then it should be made a separate question to improve clarity of questions. Removing jargon also helps with this, it not be included if it is not well known or explained properly, if the respondent has to go away from a questionnaire to look it up they might not come back. 

Powform allows the form maker to make whatever questions they like mandatory or not, which means they can tailor questionnaires to specific populations which yield a better experience and a higher form completion rate. 

You do not want your respondents making unwanted assumptions, so this should be cut out in editing your questions 

A survey is about getting factual data and assumptions should be avoided. Every piece of text the respondent has to read should be matter of fact and straight to the point. Questions with ifs and buts can be answered unsatisfactorily with a more limited data collection tool as a questionnaire. Precision of language is most important. 

This can be tightened up in the testing phase, which Powform can facilitate. You can send your branded, no-code, web app to a select group in the email list. These can be your friends and family who can check for errors/field the questions/ and check the flow of the app. This results in a much better finished product that will receive a high rate of completion from your respondents. 

Don’t just focus on your questions 

User Experience (UX) is as important as the content, if the flow is bad or the app is slow then your respondents may not complete the survey. Powform realizes the benefit of a smoothly designed app and apart from our drag-and-drop features we facilitate visual creativity, with a wide assortment of colors to choose from when you build your app. The size of the lettering and the font can also be changed depending on your tastes. 

The flow of the survey is also important,  if you are building a complex survey it is crucial that you do not challenge the respondent right away. Offer them easy questions to get them relaxed and ready to fill out the survey, generally it is best to add difficulty as the survey progresses to get the best results.  Powform’s drag-and-drop interface is perfect for making chances efficiently, so you can rapidly test as much as you like until you have developed the app flow perfectly.