Hello. When designing a quantitative survey,
remember that the answers given for respondents to
choose from must be measurable and quantifiable.
The response options you choose and how you word them is very important.
They need to be clearly stated and easy to respond to.
In this lesson, we'll go over common question types used in market research.
They are: Likert or Lickert ratings,
types measuring quantity, multiple choice,
fill in the blank, and matrix-style questions.
After this lesson, you will be able to design and
include appropriate response options for your quantitative survey.
Okay? So let's dive in again.
The response options you choose and how you word them is very important.
They need to be clearly stated and easy to respond to.
For example, if you do this and make this sentence short with an easy click-on slot,
that's very effective and easy to understand.
Now, here's a question I received from the Hyatt Insider Research Group.
Here's a list of different types of information that may be found in a hotel room.
How often do you look for this type of information in your hotel room?
The categories provided had each type of information in a room listed and
the answers were using a Likert's rating scale and circles to fill in.
But if you word it this way,
in an unclear fashion, that's problematic.
For instance, if the question were to read,
"Here is a list of different types of information that
may often be found in a hotel room.
How often do you look for this information in your hotel room?"
The word often in the first sentence confused me and made me think too
long about what often meant in terms of things in the hotel room.
It was an unnecessary word.
So you can see that the response options for what
you design in your question are very important.
The Likert scale is the most common type of scale used in qualitative research.
Though most people say Likert,
it is actually pronounced Lickert since it's
named after a psychologist named Rensis Likert,
and he pronounced his name Lickert.
A Lickert scale is a psychometric or rating scale.
When responding to a Lickert scale question,
respondents specify their level of agreement or disagreement on
a symmetric agree-disagree scale for a series of statements.
You would tend to use this kind of response option when you want
to capture the intensity of your respondents' feelings for a given item.
Quantity-type questions are things like how many,
how often, how frequently, how much,
what percentage, what proportion, to what extent?
It's called the quantity because the answer will have a number range to choose from.
Sometimes, it's a definitive number like five days a week.
The number five will be one of the answers.
In other words, you would get an exact number if you ask
a question like "How many text messages do you send a day?"
It could be any number.
When analysis is done,
you would then come up with an average number or range of numbers.
You would tend to use this kind of
response option when you want to establish the extent to which people use,
do or feel something.
The multiple choice option is an old standard in the field of research.
It allows respondents to select all of the answer options that apply.
An example would be if you wanted to allow
your customers to select all of their favorite features.
It's called the multiple choice option because
the respondent can choose more than one option.
You would tend to use this kind of response option when you want to
find out the most common responses over the entire population.
The fill in the blank option is basically the same as
a qualitative response because the answer can be open-ended and not restricted.
It is often referred to as
a text-entry option because the respondent can write in their own personal response.
You would tend to use this kind of
response option when you want in-depth personal information
designed to encourage full and elaborate responses that are entirely free of restraint.
The difficulty in this type of question on a quantitative survey is
it's extremely time-consuming to code and difficult to quantify.
In a truly quantitative survey,
it should be used sparingly.
A matrix option is used for condensing
your survey question when categories have the same answer option.
It's called matrix because columns are used for categories and rows are used for options.
You would tend to use this kind of response option because it allows you to get
the answers on one question rather than setting up multiple questions.
Depending on the software used to create the question,
sometimes these can be tricky to set up but it's a really good way to get
a lot of information all at once from a respondent in one question.
In a way, it's a good way to make it appear to
a respondent that they're only answering one question,
thus avoiding the question fatigue when they're actually answering multiple questions.
Sometimes it's even answering up to 10 to 15 questions.
For example, if you do this and make this sentence short with an easy click-on slot,
that's very effective and easy to understand.
Susan BermanPresident, Impact Research
Olivier Rubel, PhDAssociate Professor, Graduate School of Management
