Number of Questions in a Questionnaire: Data-Backed Guide

“How many questions should I include in my survey?”

“With limited survey questions, will I be able to collect enough information from my target audience?”

“Or, will a large number of questions tire my customers and make them drop out of my survey?”

You might have faced the above dilemmas while creating a survey.

As a survey creator, you want to collect as much information as possible from your target audience. But remember, your survey takers will not always be willing to take up the surveys and most of them will have time constraints. They may find it challenging to fill out lengthy, open-ended questions and abandon the survey midway. So, it is crucial to find a balance between your data collection needs and your survey taker’s ease of survey response.

The ideal number of questions in a survey depends on many factors ranging from your survey goals to your audience type. Through this blog, let’s explore the tips and tricks to tackle the confusion of every survey creator “How many questions should be asked in a survey?”

What Are the Factors That Affect Your Survey Length

How long should a survey be? There is no definite answer to this question! It depends on many aspects ranging from what are your survey goals and objectives to the type of audience who will take your survey.

Let’s dig deeper into these factors:

1. Survey Type

There are many types of surveys like market research surveys, customer satisfaction survey, employee engagement surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, and more. An NPS survey aims to understand your customer loyalty with only one question on a scale of 0-10.  “How likely will you recommend our brand to your friends and family?”. Hence, an NPS survey is a very short survey that can be completed in seconds.

On the other hand, customer satisfaction surveys help you understand the customer’s happiness with your products and services.

This could consist of a handful of open-ended and closed-ended questions, with the exact number depending on your objective and how long the survey takes to complete. Hence, it takes more time to answer.

A powerful survey maker tool like ProProfs Survey Maker comes with customized survey templates to create any type of survey with ease.

2. Target Audience

Who is your ideal target audience? Are they your customers or potential customers or they are your employees? Based on your ideal survey base, you can keep your questions for a survey less or more in number.

For example, an annual employee survey may need more questions than a customer pop-up, because it covers several topics. Do not assume employees will not mind answering in-depth questions, though. They have limited time too, so base the length on your research objective and the completion time you measure in testing.

On the other hand, when you want to know about your online visitor’s website experience, it is better to ask them very few questions, often just one or two, in the form of a pop-up survey.

. Your website visitors easily get tired and frustrated with a lengthy survey. It is better to wait till they convert into customers before collecting and understanding their feedback about your brand.

3. Survey Objectives

Largely, business survey questions are designed with a specific goal in mind. As a startup owner, you may have a goal of understanding the needs of your target audience to serve them better. A series of market research questions, designed to understand their choices will serve the purpose here. The survey can have different questions including demographic questions, open-ended questions, and more.

Alternatively, the efforts made by a customer while interacting with your brand can be measured by a customer effort score (CES). This survey is usually very short, often just a few questions.

Usually, it is embedded at major touchpoints like product purchases or customer complaint resolution.

Asking too many questions can reduce the quality of your online survey and affect the genuineness of the feedback collected.

Why Should You Avoid Asking Too Many Questions in Your Survey?

Asking too many questions in your survey can cause issues ranging from survey dropout to lower-quality responses. Here are a few reasons to keep the surveys short and crisp:

1. Avoid Survey Fatigue

Survey fatigue is a situation in which your survey taker feels bored or tired of taking the survey. Usually, too many questions can bring in a tiring effect on the survey participants. For example, when there are so many open-ended questions, your survey takers need to think more and frame in-depth answers to the questions.

Many of them can spare only a few minutes from their busy schedule for the survey. They might see the entire survey process as a waste of time.

Fatigue also builds up across surveys, not only within a single questionnaire. If the same people receive survey after survey, response rates and answer quality can drop even when each survey is short. Space out your surveys, limit how many a single person receives in a given period, avoid repeating questions you have already asked, and share what changed after the last survey.

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2. Reduce Survey Dropout Rate

The chances of survey takers’ dropping out of the survey increase when the survey is long and exhausting.

Higher dropout can introduce bias when the people who leave differ from the people who finish, but dropout alone does not tell you how inaccurate your results are.

Research shows that a survey with more than 25 minutes of completion time shows 3 times more dropout as compared to a survey that can be completed in just 5 minutes.

3. Ensure High Data Quality

High dropout or a low response rate can distort your data when the people who leave or never respond differ from the people who finish. For example, if only 10 out of 60 people complete your survey, and they are mostly fans of your new product, your results will overstate how much people like it.

A low response rate does not prove your results are wrong, but it raises the risk, so check who responded and compare them with the audience you want to understand. You need input on every aspect of your product or service, including from critics, to understand the challenges and serve your audience better.

Based on different survey types, you can frame varying questions to suit your business needs. Let’s see how.

What Are the Ideal Number of Questions For Different Survey Types?

How many questions should I ask in an online survey form? How long should an employee survey be? What is the ideal and maximum length for a web survey? Each type of survey has its own dynamics when it comes to surveying length, survey question types, templates, customization options, and so on.

Let’s understand this one by one.

1. Customer Surveys

Customer survey length depends on the purpose. A short survey right after a support interaction may need only a few questions, while a broader relationship survey can run longer. Rather than fixing a number, set a target completion time, often a few minutes, and test that your survey meets it.

Especially, if you have a new customer, you don’t want to lose their valuable feedback by overwhelming them with a lot of questions. In fact, a new customer brings a new perspective to your products and services.

2. Employee Surveys

An employee survey can run longer than a customer survey when your objective needs it, for example an annual engagement survey that covers several topics. Employees may have a lot to say about daily responsibilities, pay, perks, and work environment, but that does not mean they will want to complete a long survey. Set the length from your research objective and the completion time you measure in testing, and use shorter pulse surveys between longer ones. 

But, make sure that the employee survey is a balanced mix of both open-ended and closed-ended questions to bring in question variety.

With this, your employees are less likely to get bored and drop out of the survey.

3. Pulse Surveys

Pulse surveys are short surveys aimed at understanding the pulse of your employees and customers alike. These surveys are usually conducted on a more frequent basis like once a month or once in two months. Also, the questions are more specific and precise. 

With pulse surveys, you can collect quick and actionable responses from both your customers and employees alike. Usually, this is a shorter version of the annual surveys with just 2-10 questions. These 2-10 questions focus on the most crux issues concerning an organization.

Frequent pulses can cause fatigue of their own. Keep them short, vary the questions, and show what changed after each round before you send the next one.

4. Intercept Surveys

Intercept surveys are in-person surveys conducted at points of contact like malls, restaurants, public places like parks, and more. Here, you intercept people and ask them to give feedback on a product or service.

While creating intercept surveys, you need to keep in mind that people do not have much time at hand. You might be interrupting their daily routine to ask for feedback. If the number of questions are more, they may not be willing to stop by and give you feedback. Hence, keep your questions as relevant as possible and limit them to just a few. 

Since you have understood how many questions should be asked in a survey of different kinds, the next section decodes the methods to determine the right number of survey questions.

Methods to Determine How Many Questions Should be Asked In a Survey

Survey length is a combination of different factors like survey purpose, average response time, determining the type of data collection, etc. There is no fixed limit on how many questions should a survey have.

1. Determine the Purpose of Your Survey

What are the aims and objectives of conducting your survey? Is it to understand the customer opinion about a newly launched product? Or, is it the aim of the survey to collect feedback after a customer touchpoint like product purchase or customer service call.

Based on the above survey objectives, your survey will vary a lot. For example, a customer service survey sent right after an interaction should be very short, often just a few questions.

On the other hand, a product survey can be a little longer to collect more detailed feedback about a newly launched product, as long as it stays within your target completion time.

2. Identify the Type of Data You Wish to Collect Through the Survey

After identifying the objective of your survey, you need to identify the type of data you want to collect. Different survey questions help you collect varied information from your target audience. 

For example, with checkbox-type questions, you can collect bulk information from your audience. 

With a comment type of question, you can collect additional information from your target audience.

3. Use MicroSurveys in Case of More Questions

Micro Surveys contain 1-2 questions. It is ideal to split up your long survey into micro-surveys to reduce the burden on your survey respondents.

For example, if you want to learn about a newly launched product feature, first run a micro survey with one neutral question, such as “How would you rate our new product feature?” Then send a short follow-up matched to each answer. Users who rate it highly can be asked “How has the new product feature solved your problem?” Users who rate it low or neutral can be asked “What could we improve about the new product feature?” Users who have not tried it can be asked what has held them back.

Hearing from both satisfied and dissatisfied users gives you a balanced picture. Capping how many follow-ups any one person receives keeps fatigue down.

4. Determine the Average Answering Time

Based on the different survey types and the industry type, you need to determine the average survey completion time.

For example, a pulse survey may take only 2-3 minutes, while a detailed employee survey may take around 10-15 minutes. Treat these as rough examples, and time your own survey in a pilot with people like your respondents. Let your research objective and that tested completion time set the number of questions, not the other way around.

Also, make sure that you inform the survey takers about the time that will be taken to complete the survey so they can be mentally prepared to complete the survey.

5. Make Use of Market Research Panels

Market research panels consist of a predefined group of individuals who have agreed to take part in the survey process. With this, you are assured of a requisite participation rate for your survey and design the number of questions accordingly. Also, you get to easily decide certain parameters like the demographics to be tracked, choices to be captured, and more.

6. Ask the Right Survey Question

Every survey type is characterized by a definite set of questions. For example, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is based on customer loyalty questions while the employee satisfaction surveys takes into account an employee’s overall satisfaction with their job. 

The easiest way to present the right questions to your target audience is to access survey templates from a good survey maker tool. Most of the tools provide customized templates to get started with different types of surveys ranging from a customer satisfaction survey to an employee engagement survey.

7. Test Your Survey

Unless and until you test your survey, you can’t experience the first-hand performance of your survey. Ideally, you can get a third party to test and review your survey. When a fresh pair of eyes evaluate the survey, you get a fair perspective on the different question types: Are the questions long or short? Is a question precise enough? Will your survey respondents be able to complete the survey in the stipulated time, and more.

Be Market Ready by Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time!

Deciding the number of questions to be asked in a survey is necessary to ensure higher survey response rates. You need to take into account different factors like the type of survey, your target audience, and your survey objectives.

Asking the right number of questions involves careful research and planning. Firstly, you need to brainstorm your survey goals and the type of data you want to capture. Once you have decided this, it is time to determine the average time to answer based on your survey type. For example, a pulse survey is very short and needs just 2-3 minutes of your survey respondent’s time. Lastly, test your survey with a third party to understand its efficacy.

Are you looking to create a survey with the right number of questions? ProProfs Survey Maker gives you access to the right survey templates with the exact number of impactful survey questions.