In an Online Survey Format, as the questionnaire a self-administrated one and the respondent reads and fills it completely on his/her own without any direct human interaction/guidance, the questions needs to be phrased keeping in mind the ‘Target Respondent’ and not the ‘Interviewer’.

Accordingly the questions not only need to be in a language that the respondents are comfortable in reading, comprehending and responding, but the choice of words and sentences also need to be often very simple for even the ‘most common denominator’ of the respondents to understand and answer.

Online Questionnaires should ideally be not long as the respondent may lose interest, get fatigued and drop off. This may affect the quality of responses and therefore results. Further, as respondents may not be willing to write/type a lot (unlike offline surveys where they just talk), questions need to be as much ‘close-ended’ (choose type) as possible rather than ‘open ended’.

Online Questionnaire format is self-administered nature it gives us options of work smarter and create simpler and more respondent-centric and friendly questionnaires than face to face offline surveys, where the questionnaires are created keeping in mind the interviewer more than the respondent. 

Read more: 6 Tips that will help to Improve Online Surveys