Survey Questions and Answer Types

Build a Great Survey with Purposeful Survey Questions and Answer Types

The only way to get great insight is to start by creating a survey that is easy to take, and asks the right questions the right way.  As you build your survey, determine how you intend to use the answers to each question. Your goals for the survey will guide you as you formulate the question and select a survey question and answer type—steering your survey down the appropriate path.

For example, if you want to understand how happy your customers are with your service, use a rating scale question. If you need to know more about the background and income level of your survey respondents, a demographic question is appropriate.  Use a constant sum question to understand how much your customers spend on movies, dinners and travel in a typical month and have the total sum automatically. 

Once you get the hang of it, you will quickly know which question and answer type to use and why—and the technical names will no longer elude you. So the next time you need feedback on how your brand or service measures based on certain characteristic, you’ll know that the staple scale is the appropriate choice. The list goes on—semantic differential scale, rank order scale, simple multiple choice and so on.

Zoomerang takes the guesswork out of which survey questions and answer types to use.

Most of us are better at interpreting results than building the perfect survey, so we are fortunate that creating a survey with Zoomerang is fast and easy. Start by using one of our hundreds of free, professionally-designed survey templates. These templates were built by our professional survey designers and have all the questions and answer types placed appropriately within the survey for you to edit.

 Sign up for Zoomerang Pro today for only $199/year and let us help you collect great feedback today!

Top 5 Most Popular Survey Question and Answer Types:

1- Rank Order Scale: This question type allows survey takers to rank items in order of preference by selecting a numeric value for each answer prompt. Each numeric value can be used only once. You can also include a "Don't Know" option if desired. Make sure to include the meaning of the scale in the question.

2- Multiple Choice: This question type allows the survey taker to select one or more options from a list of answers that you define. All answers are displayed on the screen at once. You can include an "other" option that will allow the survey taker to enter their own answer if none of the provided answers applies to them.

3- Rating Scale: This question type allows the survey taker to select a single rating for your question. Each button has a number and you can add labels above each number. The responses are presented side-by-side, which is ideal for comparative type questions that require a scale such as "Poor/Excellent" or "Less Likely/More Likely". When filling out the answer options, select the number of options and then type in an answer label to correspond with each number.

4- Dichotomous Questions: As mentioned above, these are binary questions, typically “Yes/No” questions to which you can add an optional comments box.

5- Open-ended Text: This requires the respondent to type their answer in, and does not provide specific pre-set answer options.  Responses are then viewed individually or by sophisticated text analysis tools – just like Zoomerang’s Open Ended Question Analysis tool – available exclusively to Zoomerang Premium subscribers.