Your research question is what defines the gap you’re trying to fill. It’s what guides the direction of your research and the research methods you use. Typically, you only need a single research question to guide your study in essays and research papers, but for market research and surveys in general, you need questions.

Without a good research question, you have nothing to guide your research and have a strong chance of getting rejected or collecting poor data that does nothing for your research. If your research question gets rejected, it means you would have to go back to the drawing board to look at your research problem all over again and pick a specific aspect you want to solve. It’s a long and tedious process that you shouldn’t have to go through.

Let’s examine what research questions are and best practices for creating them to ensure they are approved.

The Role of Research Questions in Surveys and Data Collection

Your research question is your compass to having a successful study; it maps out what you want to discover, which also determines the methods you will use. For example, if your goal is to know how customers feel about your newly launched product, your main research question is “How do my customers feel about Product A?” This would guide your survey question design.  

How Research Questions Impact the Approval Process

Before starting your study, you would have to present your research proposal, where you will show your review board or stakeholders what you intend to study, how you intend to go about it, and the method you will use for it. They will scrutinize it and approve or disapprove with recommendations. If you don’t get it right the first time, you have to do this process over and over again till you get it right.

Here are some things to pay attention to when creating your research question:

• A focused research objective: Your research question should be focused on a specific part of the research problem. This proves to the person assessing you that you have a clear map of what you want to solve, and makes it easier to come out with relevant results.
• Feasibility within the study’s scope: While it’s good to be ambitious with your research question, you need to base your research question on the problems you can actually solve.

• Ethical considerations: Regardless of how groundbreaking your research question is, it has to be within what ethics approve of.

Understanding the Approval Process: What Reviewers Look For

Here are the major things reviewers assess in your research questions:

• Clarity and specificity.
• Research goal alignment.
• Ethical soundness.
• Bias or any form of leading questions.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Submitting Survey Research Questions

• Vague wording – Your research question should ask respondents specific questions. For example, “Do you like our product (Yes or no)?” vs. “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our product’s ease of use?” The first question is not specific enough, while the second question picks a specific aspect of the research goal (product satisfaction).
• Overly broad scope – If your questions are too generic, it makes it hard to actually find out the problem you want to solve. For example, if you create a survey about your product, ask users every possible question about your product, e.g., satisfaction, design, frequency of use, etc., aside from the fact that you are going to cause survey fatigue, you also have to deal with analyzing multiple objectives in a single survey.
• Leading questions – Ask questions with an already implied answer, like “Don’t you agree that our service is excellent?”, which biases your responses, making your data unreliable.

What Makes a Research Question ‘Approval-Ready’?

Here are some key characteristics of a strong research question that’s likely to get approved:

• Clarity and Focus: A strong research question doesn’t try to solve everything or study everything; a strong research question is focused on a specific area. Your research question should also be simple and easy to understand, leaving no room for ambiguity.  If the reviewers or stakeholders don’t understand your question, they are much more likely to reject it, not because your question isn’t addressing an important problem, but because they don’t get you.
• Feasibility: Consider your resources and ensure your question can be answered within the study’s constraints. For example, if your research question is to figure out “How does freshwater conservation affect local communities in State A?” Your question is only feasible if you have the time, data collection tools, and other necessary resources to conduct your study.
• Relevance: Every question should tie back to your research objectives.

How to Craft Research Questions That Align with Your Survey Goals

The following is a roadmap to help you create questions that help you collect the data you need:

• Outline your primary research objectives and break them into sub-questions. For example, my overall goal is to understand user satisfaction with my new app launch, and my objectives are to assess ease of use, functionality, support, etc. My questions will be tailored around these objectives.
• Use appropriate and structured question formats, such as Likert scales for quantitative data, and open-ended questions for qualitative insights. This ensures you can evaluate your data in numbers and with sentiment.

PS: Formplus has different question and option types that allow you to create survey questions that fit your survey goals.

Common Types of Survey Research Questions: Choosing the Right Format

The most common types of research questions are open-ended and closed questions. Open-ended means respondents can give their feedback in their own words, either by typing it in via digital forms or by telling you via one-on-one interviews. Closed-ended questions are questions with computed answers, e.g., On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with the pricing of croissant?”

Closed-Ended vs. Open-Ended Questions: When to Use Each

The Importance of Question Types in Survey Design

Different question types help you collect insights differently. Here’s how it works:

• Multiple-choice: Multiple-choice questions help you understand respondents’ choices, which is great for structured data analysis. For example, if your goal is to understand how people find your website, a multiple-choice listing all your channels, e.g, Google search, social media, friend recommendation, is a good choice.
• Ranking questions: This is very useful when you want to understand people’s scale of preference. This works when you want to compare products, services, or candidates, or you want to choose what to prioritize.
• Matrix questions: This is a great option if you want to rate multiple items. For example, the peer review form allows colleagues to rate one another based on different criteria.

The Language of Research Questions: How to Write Clearly and Effectively

Here are some pointers for writing clear research questions people actually want to complete:

• Avoiding Ambiguity: Keep it simple and direct. Ask your questions using plain language, don’t give room for respondents to imply or infer; it either frustrates them and they drop off, or they give half-hearted responses that won’t help your study. For example, instead of asking “Do you think the app is good? (Yes or No)” Ask, “How would you rate the app’s performance on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent)?”
• Writing for Different Audiences: Unless you’re writing for a technical audience, the rule of thumb is to use simple terms. A  technical audience can handle jargon, while the general public needs simpler language. Also, when writing questions, adjust for user profiles based on their demographics and behaviour to personalize their experience and increase your chances of getting them to complete the survey.

Validating Your Research Questions

Before presenting your research question, here are some steps you can take to check if they are a good fit:

• Run a small-scale test to identify: This is called a pilot test. You give the question to a small group and see how they react to it. This can help you spot confusing wording, ideal response options, question types, and biases in phrasing.
• Use feedback to refine: After collecting data from your sample audience, use the insights from it to understand if they misinterpreted your questions or were confused by them.

Incorporating Ethics and Objectivity into Your Research Questions

Aside from asking the right questions, you also need to comply with ethics, so this means:

• Writing Unbiased Questions That Don’t Lead Respondents: For example, don’t say “How amazing was our event?” (Leading), instead say “How would you rate your experience at our event?” (Neutral).

• Ensure Ethical Considerations: Only collect data after collecting respondents’ informed consent. Sure, you want your survey to go viral, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of your respondents’ consent.  Also, avoid sensitive questions unless necessary, and protect respondent anonymity and data.

P.S. All Formplus forms are GDPR compliant and use end-to-end encryption to ensure your respondents’ data is secure.

Using Formplus for Easy Submission and Approval

Here are some features to make your research question submission and approval effortless:

• • Pre-built templates: We have a template bank of different surveys and forms with carefully non-biased and carefully researched questions to help you collect the data you need.

• Teams: If you’re constantly creating new surveys or forms, creating a team is one of the easiest hacks for collaboration. You can share drafts, and the reviewer leaves their comment. You also have version control to track revisions.

Features That Help You Create and Revise Questions Quickly

• Drag-and-drop question builder: Simply drag and drop the question and option types, e.g., multiple choice, rating scales, open-ended questions, etc. 

• Real-time preview of surveys: You can also view your form in different screen sizes, including desktop, mobile, and tablet, to ensure you don’t just ask the right questions, your form also looks and feels good.

• • Logic: All respondents are not the same, so asking them the same questions might not really help you collect the data you need. Using conditional logic helps you show different research questions to respondents based on their previous choices, personalizing their experience. For example, if your goal is to see how different age groups use social media, 

• Secure Forms: Our forms are built for user privacy. We keep your respondents’ data protected by end-to-end encryption and CAPTCHA to filter out spam and bot responses.

The Bottom Line

Without good research questions, you are likely to launch a survey that doesn’t give you useful insights that can help you achieve your goal. Strong research questions ensure that you have a clear direction for your research. It also ensures the data you collect is relevant and mirrors your audience’s actual opinions.

Formplus helps you create survey research questions that your audience loves and actually wants to complete. You can also preview your questions to ensure they’re easy and engaging to fill out, as well as share the form with your manager or reviewer using the team feature for comments and feedback on your research questions.

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