« Spinning out the Next Generation of Tech Entrepreneurs | Home | Increase the Depth of your Client Relationships »

ProTip: Keep the Flow of Your Questions Smooth

By crooky | March 12, 2008

I have a project that I’m working on at the moment where we’ve hit a bit of a snag in our research methodology. It’s a good lesson that I want to share with you all. Picture this, you’re taking a survey that’s asking you some pretty detailed questions about your business. Then, in the middle of the survey, you get hit with a in-survey presentation about a product. However, the presentation is wordy and poorly defined because the product itself doesn’t really exist yet - it’s conceptual.

Now the problem that we’re having is in addition to a poor response rate, the bulk of the respondents (84%) are not getting past this interstitial presentation. To put it bluntly, it’s killing the survey.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that you must ask people questions about things that they already know about. It’s really too challenging to throw complex information at someone and expect them to react to it in follow-on questions. There are exceptions to this rule, obviously. When film-makers test-screen movies, they’re looking for people’s gut reactions to a film. Either you like it or you don’t like it. You might be asked to give specific reasons why you don’t like the film but you don’t need to think too hard about the situation.

Same goes for product testing. If you’re going to put a product in front of someone and ask them a bunch of questions about it, the information about the product needs to be clear, concise and visual. Any lack of clarity is only going to confound the issues.

A good survey or executive interview is a lot like a test-screening of a movie. The flow of the dialogue needs to be smooth. Too many ripples or abrupt changes (like introducing a foggy product demo into the middle of a web survey) will confuse and aggravate the people you are trying to survey. They will, to extend the film metaphor, get up and leave the theatre if you piss them off enough.

So, make sure that whatever information you’re trying to extract is easy to give. Keep respondents in their comfort zone.

*********************
Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Research Methodologies |

Comments