When designing your questionnaire you will include survey demographic questions to serve as break variables, so that differences in responses between groups can be identified. Demographic Survey questions include:
- Age related questions
- Gender identification
- Ethnic Origin
- Postal Code
Advertising and content targeting depends on these types of questions. Customer survey questionnaires heavily depend on demographic questions. If your questionnaire results tell you that 65% of your respondents are Males in the 25 to 39 age group, your advertising would focus on that age and gender group as they would make up a large portion of your customer base.
Demographic Questions can be open or closed as seen in these examples:
OPEN
CLOSED
If you select closed questions, you must decide how to break up your categories:
OR
Your categories need to be broken up into divisions that make sense for your research. You do not want unbalanced categories that would distort your survey findings.
The charts below show the information from the more segmented, second closed question, above. As you can see the chart below with more age breaks is more detailed and accurate.
If you had used the first question to build your chart, you would have many fewer “older age” brackets. The chart above has it broken down by 5 year segments. The one below is much broader:
It can be challenging to design your survey. Many researchers use a survey software solution for assistance and guidance when developing a questionnaire.
