People Aren't Robots: A Practical Guide to the Psychology and Technique of Questionnaire Design

The 4th edition is newly revised in 2023 and includes a forward by Pravin Shekar, The Outlier Marketer and Former Interim CEO of ESOMAR! This book will help marketers, brand managers, and advertising executives who may have less experience in the research industry create great questionnaires and collect high quality data. It will also help academic and experienced researchers in a range of social science disciplines write questionnaires that are better suited for the general population, particularly when using research panels and customer lists. Many questionnaire books treat the people who answer questionnaires as robots rather than as fallible, imperfect people. This can lead to poor response rates, poor completion rates, poor data quality, and results that didn't always generalize to the desired target audience. A unique approach to questionnaire design: Written by a market researcher with more than twenty years of practical questionnaire design experience, People Aren't Robots takes a human and empathetic approach to the design of questions. This results in survey questions that help people answer more honestly and get you better, more actionable data. It's written from a respectful point of view that puts people first and researchers second. Generate trustworthy answers to your key consumer and customer questions: How satisfied are my customers? What do my shoppers want and need? What characteristics does my target audience have? What drives them to shop? What improvements do my customers want? Where do my customers shop? Why are my shoppers choosing competitors? What are the values and beliefs of my shoppers? What are the current market trends? What markets should I expand into? What innovations should I develop? Questionnaire design topics include: The mindset required to create survey questions people actually want to answerBasic principles and guidelines for designing survey questionsBest practices for choosing respectful and inclusive words and languageSteps for creating screener questions that identify the correct target audienceProcesses for writing data quality questions that identify people prepared to participate todayAvoiding common question design problemsDesigning various types of quantitative and qualitative questions, e.g., single-selects, multi-selects, grids, scales, ranks, ratings, open-ends, verbatimsDesigning sensitive questions related to income, ethnicity, and disabilitiesDesigning demographic questions like age, region, and employment