Custom questions in surveys
PI Diagnose empowers leaders to send engagement surveys and gather candid feedback to improve the employee experience. To enhance the value of these surveys, Diagnose allows you to create custom questions before distributing the survey to your team or organization.
Once you’ve selected the template, review the standard questions and determine if you’d like to add your own custom questions. There are currently two custom question options:
1. Likert scale: Questions that ask respondents to rate their level of agreement or disagreement with a statement. Our Likert scales provide a range from 1-5. The results are used to evaluate attitudes, opinions and perceptions.
2. Open response: Questions that encourage the respondent to provide their own words, which helps to see their perspective. The results are used to hear from employees in their own words and provide a deeper understanding of their perspective.
When should I use Likert scale and when should I use open response?
Likert scale questions are quantatative (numbers-based), which means they’re countable and measurable. They’ll provide answers that will measure things like how much, how many, how frequently, etc. These questions offer the respondent the opportunity to indicate their level of agreement on or opinion of a statement. In order for these questions to be effective, questions must be answerable using a scale of something like, “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”
Example: I value my manager’s feedback on my performance.
Open response questions are qualitative (interpretation-based), which means they’re descriptive, related to language, and provide answers to questions that require a description and can vary by respondent. These questions offer the opportunity to provide a more detailed and nuanced perspective on a topic. They must be clear in regards to what types of responses are expected.
Example: Describe a time this year where you felt your team exceeded expectations.
What makes a good survey question?
Good survey questions allow respondents to understand what they’re being asked and provide them with the ability to reply thoughtfully. In order to ensure your survey meets its goals, custom questions should be:
Use language that everyone in your organization will easily understand. Avoid jargon or acronyms that not everyone will be familiar with.
Examples:
- Avoid: I understand my role in our company’s KIs.
- Good: I understand my role in our company’s key initiatives.
Employee engagement surveys are designed to capture employee sentiment at a point in time and then measure engagement over a period of time. Therefore, if you add a custom question, make sure it appears in future versions of the survey and any pulse checks over time if it’s something you expect to change over time.
Examples:
- Avoid: Last week’s employee gathering helped improve our culture.
- Good: The employee events we hold as a company help improve our culture.
Make sure the question relates to the reason you’re sending the survey. For example, if you’ve chosen the Manager Relationship template, questions should be focused on the relationship between the manager and their direct report(s). You wouldn’t want to ask questions about company benefits.
Your questions should not influence the respondents’ reply or introduce any bias. Questions should be asked in such a way that they allow respondents to answer honestly, without language that is leading or persuasive.
Examples:
- Avoid: We think we have great communication at our organization, do you? Do you agree that people here communicate well?
- Good: The people I work with communicate effectively with each other (1-5: Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree)
Make sure your questions are not complicated and do not ask multiple things or address two separate concepts in a single question. This is called a “double-direct” question and can be seen as a trick question by participants, which may negatively impact their participation. It can also take away from the quality of the data when it’s time to analyze the results. If you really want to ask two things, create two questions.
Examples:
- Avoid: Does your manager provide opportunities for learning and development and do you have an appropriate work/life balance?
- Good:
- My manager provides opportunities for learning and development.
- My manager provides me with an appropriate work/life balance.
Make sure to ask a variety of questions rather than asking the same question in a different way.
Tips for open response questions
The purpose of an open response question is to provide respondents with the opportunity to use their own words. Since open response questions are exploratory in nature, they invite insights into respondents’ opinions, feelings, and experiences. Good open response questions will often dig into all three.
- Don’t ask questions that can be answered “yes” or “no.” Also, think about the length of the responses you’d like to see. Do you want people to answer in a paragraph? Ask open ended questions. Do you want them to answer in a word or phrase? Structure the question as such.
- Avoid: Would you make any changes to the way we currently structure our monthly meetings?
- Good: What changes would you like to see regarding the structure of our monthly meetings?
- Be thoughtful about how many open response questions you ask, as they take more time and effort for respondents to answer. Focus on quality over quantity.
- When you’re creating the question, ask yourself, “will the responses provide us with the information we need to take action or create change? If not, skip it. Including these questions can reduce participation and make it more difficult to capture reliable data.
- Make open response questions optional. Some respondents may not have enough information, may not have an opinion, or may not feel comfortable responding to an open response question. Allow them to opt out. Forcing answers increases the likelihood of someone quitting the survey.
What might I avoid asking in a custom question?
When you ask about serious, emotionally charged, or unusual questions, it can affect the way a person responds to other questions in the survey and how guarded they may be. Consider whether or not this is the right place to ask those questions. If you need to know certain things, maybe think about a separate avenue/channel.
We hope you enjoy the added flexibility provided by custom questions and find them helpful in fine-tuning your employees’ survey-taking experience!
How many custom questions do you recommend?
We recommend adding custom questions as you need them, but that you pay close attention to how much time you are adding on to your survey. Longer surveys require more time and can result in survey fatigue. Likert type questions usually take between 15 and 30 seconds to complete, while open ended questions take longer.
Because more questions equals more time, it might not be advisable to add more than ten custom questions. Being discerning about which questions are really necessary or whether redundancies exist may help you be more selective about which custom questions to include.
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