Whether it's for our college work, taking a survey about our product idea, or asking acquaintances and friends about habits, getting data is easier with an online questionnaire. We have many tools of all kinds, from the most popular to others more dedicated such as Dragon Survey, which we can access here, which gives us all the tools to make it comfortable and easy to do.
It seems easy to just start taking the online questionnaire and that's it, which is just typing the questions and submitting a link. Well, there are many secrets to make you get results and make it more comfortable for respondents or applicants.
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Reduce and avoid redundancies
You probably have a very ambitious online questionnaire in your head, but you have to bear in mind that if we collect data from altruistic people, it is best not to be long. Try to eliminate questions that are not relevant and that are not repetitive. Do not tire the respondents and do not ask them a repetitive cycle of questions. They are there dedicating their time for your university work, so you must value theirs equally.
Do not underestimate the identity and origin of the respondents if it is relevant
Asking the city they live in, age and gender can be very relevant to your online questionnaire if it is about gathering mixed opinions and not exact results. People are already used to putting that data in questionnaires and they do it automatically. Asking them about this will give you a greater insight into the data and see if opinions or experiences are given by their cultural and social background.
Ask a question to see if they are attentive
Do you want a way to make sure that the data is being filled in by attentive people? Put a question with some trick, so they have to select an option that they will only get right if they pay attention. You can use the following example:
«To ensure that you are paying attention to this online questionnaire, please select the 'Sometimes'»
- Always
- A veces
- Never
This way you can quickly filter out all those who have not selected the “A veces» and not take their data into account. Another option is to do a simple two-digit addition or subtraction of low value, such as “What is 2 + 3?”, and if you don’t want bots to fill it out, combine written numbers with digital ones to make sure it’s filled out by attentive humans. A final option is to ask them to mark the year it is in.
It is tempting to think about asking them to get a general culture question correct, but these can throw people who are not aware of these topics or who do not remember it at the time.
Open answer fields can cause problems when collecting data
Something as innocent as an open answer field, with no character limit, can make it difficult to collect data if the question is very open. They are ideal for gathering details, but you will have to deal with a null uniformity of answers, some that will give more details than you need, grammatical and spelling mistakes. Use them in your online questionnaire only when you really need it to be an open answer, like you want to know that they know the answer to a question without answering by elimination.
Learn to interpret the data that you have been given in your online questionnaire
Once you have the answers to your online questionnaire, it is time to interpret them, and this will be complicated if it is very long. You have to know how to look for patterns and trends to get more accurate data, to know which data to take and which to discard. It is not manipulation but a term called "data cooking" that the INE and the CIS use very often with their surveys. For example, they know that a certain group of voters is more vocal and loyal, while others tend to be more restrained in their responses and how they are perceived.
