The purpose of a survey is to gather opinions, thoughts, viewpoints, etc., not for you to include your personal bias and try persuade the respondent to answer a certain way. If you include loaded or leading questions, your data can be easily skewed and the accuracy of your results will be questionable – a huge crime in survey design.
What exactly is a leading question? A leading question prompts or encourages a desired answer. For example, if you are working with sensitive topics, you need to leave your personal judgment out. Prefacing a question about if the respondent thinks smoking is bad with ‘people who smoke are 5x times more likely to develop lung cancer’ will potentially lead the respondent to say that it’s bad, even though they may smoke and are not really concerned about its side effects.
Check out a clip from our recent webinar, Crimes in Survey Design, and see what Mike Phillips, our Director of Feedback Strategy has to say about this crime.
By asking leading questions, survey authors are not getting the most out of their feedback programs. The main goal of a survey is to get candid feedback on a specific topic, so don’t let leading questions keep you from obtaining your goals.
Want to learn about the other crimes of survey design? Watch the full on-demand webinar here!
