5 Types of Questionnaires (and free templates)

5 Types of Questionnaires (and free templates)

Questionnaires are a common method for gathering data during research and have been for a long time. One of the most popular and significant methods for data collecting in daily life, questionnaires are highly versatile and adaptive. Depending on the type of questions, these tools can be categorized as both quantitative and qualitative methods. Even though questionnaires are a standard research instrument, many people are still unsure of the kinds of questions that ought to be asked. And it is essential to determine these question types well.

With forms.app, you have the opportunity to benefit from free surveys and templates. In this article, we will talk about what questionnaires are, the 5 types of questionnaires and their purposes, the types of questions commonly used in surveys, and more.

What is a questionnaire?

A questionnaire is a research tool that includes a list of inquiries that must be answered by a predetermined sample of people. Here, the research should be collected to confirm or refute a hypothesis. According to the format of the questions and the expected responses, they can be broadly categorized as “qualitative method” and “quantitative method.” The usage areas and shapes of each type can, however, be used to draw more precise distinctions.

Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches can be used by researchers to collect data. These two study techniques both adhere to the scientific process. It combines many types of questions, such as open-ended and closed-ended queries, allowing the researcher to collect copious amounts of data from respondents, even when the researcher is not personally there to supervise data collection.

What is a questionnaire?

What is a questionnaire?

5 questionnaire types and their purposes

By posing standardized questions to help you obtain the correct responses, a questionnaire's goal is to increase your study dataset. On the other hand, customers have ever-changing demands and demands. Your customers now rely on you to handle problems before they become bigger problems.

By using questionnaires, you may better understand your consumers' goals and needs so that you can satisfy them. And in this respect forms.app represents one of the quite popular online platforms for facilitating data collection through questionnaires. Many questionnaires and questionnaire templates are available on this platform for your diverse needs. Also, the questionnaire maker is free.

There are many kinds of questionnaires. For example, customer satisfaction questionnaires, exit questionnaires, and research questionnaires. But here we talked about the main types of surveys that you may encounter more. Let's now examine the various survey types that you might employ.

Through the use of online data gathering tools like forms.app, it asks a series of questions of respondents to collect data from them. It contains a form builder that enables you to make many types of research questions.

It is possible to maintain the anonymity of the person filling out the questionnaire's responses in order to obtain truthful responses from the respondent. As there is no incentive for respondents to fill out the survey, the response rate to these questions is relatively low, and it is outdated.

Questionnaire types

Most used question types in questionnaires

Choosing an appropriate survey question type should be fairly easy if you've already decided on precise survey goals. For example, your choice of questions and response probabilities may vary depending on whether you choose to measure customer happiness, calculate your net supporter score (NPS), or conduct market research. Your choice of survey questions may be influenced by a variety of variables:

There are many types of survey questions. The most common of these include closed-ended survey questions and categorical and interval/ratio questions. Let's take a look at the types of questions you can use in surveys.

A - Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended questions are essentially ones that offer respondents a predetermined list of response possibilities to select from. Typically, you can respond to those with a straightforward yes or no, a predetermined number on a fixed point scale, or with a specific piece of information. Open-ended questions are the opposite of closed-ended questions; however, we'll go into more depth about those in a later section of the text.

Closed-Ended Questions

B - Categorical questions

If you want to acquire a quick, straightforward count, categorical or nominal survey questions are ideal. For example, 87% of respondents felt online surveys are entertaining," or "49% of men and 65% of women have taken a survey this year." There are various types of survey questions that fall under this category, with the following being the most typical ones:

C - Interval/ratio questions

D - Open-ended questions

In surveys with open-ended questions, participants can enter their own responses in the given text field. This indicates that there are no predetermined responses and that respondents are free to express their opinions in whatever manner they see fit. Additionally, it allows them to elaborate on their responses. You must carefully determine the ideal number of open-ended questions while developing a survey. You don't want to overburden your users because responding to these inquiries can be laborious and time-consuming. Additionally, gathering and evaluating survey replies is more challenging than with closed-ended questions due to the lack of uniform answer alternatives.

E - Dropdown selection questions

Selection questions are similar to multiple choice questions with one answer. They offer respondents a drop-down list of options from which to choose one. They are helpful when there is a big list of replies that wouldn't be appropriate to display all at once.

Dropdown selection questions

Dropdown selection questions

Free questionnaire templates to get started faster

It is possible to gather quantitative or qualitative data using questionnaires. And it is important to determine the questions you will ask here for your purpose. Because you will decide based on the data you collect. There are questionnaire types, templates, and questions for your purpose. You can choose from a variety of questionnaires, including telephone questionnaires and in-person interviews, as we've covered in this post. With a form builder like forms.app that offers easy data gathering, you can also develop an online questionnaire! Get started today with the free templates below.