Creating a good questionnaire is essential for collecting useful and accurate data. Whether you are conducting research for academic purposes, analysing market trends, or gathering customer feedback, a well-designed questionnaire helps you get the right information. In this guide, we will walk through the process of preparing a questionnaire, with easy-to-follow steps and examples.

Introduction: Why a Well-Designed Questionnaire Matters

A Questionnaire is a valuable tool for gathering information from people in a structured way, commonly used in surveys, research, and feedback collection to understand opinions, behaviours, or preferences.

One type is a Structured Questionnaire, where questions are presented in a fixed order with standardized answer options, making it consistent and easy to analyse.

In contrast, an Interview Schedule involves a list of prepared questions used by an interviewer in face-to-face or phone interviews, allowing for more flexibility and follow-up questions to gather detailed responses. These three methods complement each other depending on the research purpose and data collection needs.

The key to an effective questionnaire lies in its design, i.e., good questions lead to reliable answers, while unclear or biased questions may result in misleading data. Whether you are aiming to study employee satisfaction, consumer preferences, or attitudes toward a particular topic, structuring your questions properly ensures that you gather valuable, actionable information.

A questionnaire is more than just a list of questions; it needs to be easy to understand and focused on your research goal, answers the research questions and address the research objectives and useful to test the hypothesis. In the following steps, we will show you how to create a questionnaire that works.

1. Define the Objective of your Questionnaire

Before starting, think about the purpose of your survey. What do you want to learn? This is the foundation of your questionnaire. Whether you are researching customer experiences, understanding employee’s attitudes, or studying a market trend, knowing your objective will help you create clear and targeted questions.  This is based on your title and broad area of research.

Example: If you are researching customer satisfaction in a retail store, your goals might be:

To understand how happy customers are with the products and services of the store.

To find out what areas need improvement in the store’s services.

2. Identify your target audience or respondents

Who will take your survey? The design of your questions depends on your target audience or respondents. Knowing your audience, such as their age, interests, education, or location, etc., will help you create relevant and understandable questions. In most of the cases, your audience may generally be

Customers (Marketing domain) or

Employees (HRM domain) or

Investors (Finance domain), etc.

3. Develop a Proposed Conceptual Framework

A Proposed Conceptual Framework is a structured model that shows the relationships between key variables in a study. It is helpful for designing a questionnaire as it provides a clear structure for identifying key factors like Independent Variables (IV), Dependent Variables (DV), and other related variables. It helps create focused questions for each factor and ensures that all important areas are covered.

The framework also guides the logical arrangement of questions, making it easier to collect meaningful data. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of the questionnaire and makes data analysis more straightforward by linking questions to specific concepts.  Make sure you have adequate Independent Variables (IV), Dependent Variables (DV), etc.

Example: If you are studying about Impact of Stress on Engagement and Job Performance of employees, your variables might be:

Work-related Stressors (Independent Variable)

Engagement (Dependent/Mediating Variable) and

Job Performance of employees (Dependent Variable)

4. Choose the type of Questions

There are different types of questions you can include, depending on what kind of data you need. These include:

Closed-Ended Questions

These questions give specific answers like “Male or Female”, “Yes or No”, or multiple-choice options for example in case of Qualification: School-Level, Graduation and Professional. They are easy to analyse because the responses are simple and quantifiable.

Example:

“How long have you been the customer of this Bank?” (Less than 3 Years, 3-6 Years and more than 6 Years)

Open-Ended Questions

These questions allow individuals to express their thoughts freely, providing richer and more detailed data.

Example:

“What is your Job Experience in this organisation?” (Give a box to fill the answers (Years) such as 1, 5, 8, etc.)

Likert Scale Questions

These measure attitudes or opinions by asking respondents to rate something on a scale. For example, from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.”

Example:

“I plan to increase the size of investments in Gold”

Strongly Disagree (1), Disagree (2), Neutral (3), Agree (4) and Strongly Agree (5)

The example is based on 5-point Likert Scale.

Demographic or Product/Job/Investment-related Questions

These questions gather background information, like age, income, or education level, Job Experience, Average Amount of Purchase of product, Investment Period, etc. to segment your audience.  These may be open-ended or closed-ended. Generally, 3 to 4 options are enough to these types of categorical questions and avoid giving more options (more than 4) unless it is really necessary.  Try to give at-least one or two open-ended questions in these sections.

Example:

“What is your age group?”

(a) Under 18 Years (b) 18-35 Years (c) 36-50 Years (d) Above 5 Years (Close-ended)

Your Age (     ) Years (Open-ended)

5. Organise the Questionnaire Structure

A well-organized questionnaire ensures that respondents don’t get confused. Start with easy questions, then move to more complex ones. Group similar questions together, and keep a natural flow to make the questionnaire easier to complete.  You must give questions in section-wise.

Example Structure:

Introduction

A brief explanation of the survey’s purpose, how long it will take, and how their responses will be used.  In case of PhD Research, you may give Scholar’s Name, Guide Name and Educational Institution Name, etc.

Example:

“This survey helps us understand your online shopping experience. It will take 5 minutes to complete.”

“This survey is solely for academic purposes, and all personal information will be kept confidential.”

Demographic Questions

Simple questions to understand the background of the respondent.

Example: “What is your Age?”

Core Survey Questions

The main questions related to your research and are generally Likert-scale based and includes Independent, Mediating and Dependent Variables, etc.

Examples:

“The management considers my goals and values”

“I find the layout of the app is user-friendly”

“I become loyal to this brand”

Conclusion

Ask the participants to provide comments and suggestions for improvements and thank them for participating/answering.

Example:

“Please provide your comments and suggestions for improvements”

“Thank you for completing the survey”

Conclusion

A well-structured questionnaire helps you gather meaningful data and insights. By defining your research objectives, variables and understanding your audience, designing clear and relevant questions, and testing your questionnaire, you can collect valuable information. Following the above steps will make sure your questionnaire works effectively, providing reliable and accurate responses.

Would you like to need the guidance and assistance for the questionnaire?  Contact us.