11 Survey Question Types: What, Why & How

Surveys are a tried and tested method of collecting audience insights at scale. You don’t just get to know more about your audience, their habits, and preferences; you also get the ability to make data-backed business decisions.

But you need to ask the right survey questions to get the right answers. After all, different types of questions give different types of insights. For example, qualitative questions for in-depth, descriptive feedback and quantitative questions for numerical, structured responses.

In this post, you’ll learn all about the 11 different types of survey questions you can create with Delve AI, all the way from multiple-choice and open-ended questions to matrix and image-based questions.

11 Different Types of Survey Questions with Examples: Plus How to Create Them in Delve AI

If done right, surveys can help you learn a lot about your business customers and product users. But for that to happen, you need to read up about survey design, which teaches you how to define the scope of your survey, identify main concepts and indicators, and pick the right survey questions.

Since we’re mainly focusing on different types of questions in this post, we won’t go into much detail on the former.

However, to get started with the different survey question types available in Delve AI, we have to create a survey. For any kind of research study, whether it's surveys, interviews, or focus group discussions, use Delve AI’s Synthetic Research software. It helps you create a synthetic user panel, run surveys, and get an in-depth report with user transcripts, graphs, and more.

It’s easy to get started. To generate a synthetic panel for your study, go to Synthetic Research > Panels once you’re logged in, then follow this three-point process:

• Name your synthetic user panel, eg, Consumer Insights Survey Panel.

Select the persona(s) or persona segments you want to use to generate the simulated users, like Research Persona and Customer Persona.

Add the number of respondents and click “Generate users.”

Once you’ve done that, the platform will generate synthetic users in minutes, who you can then use to conduct your market research surveys. Just don’t forget to buy the chat tokens first.

To make the entire exercise easier to understand, let’s create a survey for a popular B2C brand, Nike. Surveys follow the same three-point process as synthetic panels:

1. Panel: Enter your research study name – Customer Insights Survey – the number of users, user panels (Consumer Insights Survey Panel), and research goal.

After the process is complete, our synthetic research tool will collect, analyze, and visualize participant responses for you. You can see the results in the survey dashboard, where you’ll find graphs, themes, transcripts, and finally, a detailed survey analysis with key learnings.

Having said that, here’s a list of the main types of survey questions you can create using Delve AI:

1. Multiple choice questions
2. Open-ended questions + closed-ended questions
3. Rating scale questions
4. Likert scale questions
5. Matrix questions (grid questions)
6. Dichotomous (yes/no) questions
7. Ranking questions
8. Demographic questions
9. Drop-down questions
10. Slider questions
11. Image choice questions

Let’s discuss what these survey questions are, how they help, and see some survey question examples – both the question and output – for Nike. Please note that all images used are for representational purposes only.

1. Multiple choice questions

Starting with one of the most popular survey question types, we have the multiple-choice questions, which, as the name suggests, include more than one response option. You can have a question like “What’s your favourite animal?” and ask respondents to choose from one or more options like dogs, cats, zebras, horses, lions, and more.

The beauty of multiple-choice questions is that they are fairly easy to answer and analyze. The only thing to be careful about is not to include too many options, lengthy options, or options that match each other.

Here’s the multiple-choice question we framed for Nike:

Q. Which of the following brands are you familiar with? Select all that apply.

• Nike
• Adidas
• Puma
• New Horizon
• Sketchers
• Reebok
• Other

See how we’ve included “Other” as the last option? It gives users the flexibility to indicate that the brand they wish to select is not available in the options provided.

Note: Multiple choice questions can be either single-answer questions (user selects only one option) or multiple-answer questions (user selects more than one option).

2. Open-ended questions + Close-ended questions

Open-ended survey questions help get more meaningful answers from survey respondents than any other question types. Researchers can ask, “What do you think about the planet Earth?” and users can answer in their own words, either in the written or spoken language.

It helps you know their reasoning, motivations, pain points, and sentiments regarding a particular subject, i.e., Earth.

Although the output quality is superior, the qualitative data is unstructured; it’s a hassle to code it and then come up with important themes and topics. Also, users may just skip the question or abandon the survey altogether due to survey fatigue.

You can avoid these problems in Delve AI, as transcripts are automatically analyzed by the system, and synthetic personas don’t get bored or tired of answering questions.

Look at the open-ended question example for Nike:

Q. What is the reason you chose Nike over other athletic brands?

Besides open-ended questions, you have close-ended questions – questions with a limited number of responses, like yes/no, rating, and demographic questions, which we’ll discuss in the next sections.

Note: In normal surveys, it’s a good idea to keep open-ended questions optional whenever possible and mix them with short, single-choice questions (eg, NPS, Likert-scale questions).

3. Rating scale questions

Brands like Amazon are always asking questions like, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Amazon to your friends or family?” You generally get it via email or on the app when you’ve been a user for a while. It’s the same for Netflix, Spotify, and others – all of these brands ask you to rate their products and services on a scale.

This is an example of a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question, which is a type of rating scale question.

Rating scale questions ask respondents to rate a brand, object, or opinion on a numerical scale (eg, 1–5 satisfaction ratings, or 1–10 likelihood scores). This helps gauge participants' preferences or aversion to a concept or entity.

For Nike, it’s the following:

Q. On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with the quality of your most recent Nike purchase?

Note: Rating questions, also known as opinion scale questions, should have clear anchor labels to prevent confusion (eg, 1 = Very dissatisfied, 5 = Extremely satisfied).

4. Likert scale questions

Likert scale questions measure respondents' sentiments, attitudes, and opinions toward a statement or brand. Invented by Rensis Likert in 1932, it uses a consistently labeled scale to understand the extent to which participants agree or disagree with a statement.

Here’s one for Nike:

Q. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement: “Nike products are innovative.”

• Strongly disagree
• Disagree
• Neutral
• Agree
• Strongly agree

Note: Likert scale questions should have a neutral midpoint as shown in the example above. Keep in mind to label the scales properly and avoid double-barreled questions (eg, “Nike products are innovative and high quality”).

5. Matrix questions (Grid questions)

Matrix questions, also known as grid questions, simplify and shorten your survey by allowing respondents to rate multiple items or options in one go. A number of Likert-scale questions by Amazon, for example.

In pen and paper surveys, you get a grid or table organized by rows, which contain unique items/options, and columns, which have the numeric or categorical scale denoting satisfaction or ratings.

For Nike, we used the matrix-rating scale across five dimensions:

Q. Please rate your satisfaction with the following aspects of Nike. (1 = Very dissatisfied, 5 = Very satisfied).

• Product durability
• Comfort and fit
• Design and style options
• Value for money
• Size availability

Note: Keep the number of items/options and scale (eg, 1–5) limited so that it doesn’t confuse and overwhelm the users. We know it looks efficient, but it takes a lot of computing power.

6. Dichotomous questions (Yes/No questions)

Dichotomous questions or yes/no questions offer only two options: namely, yes and no. They are a type of close-ended survey question that presents only negative and positive choices (eg, agree/disagree, true/false) for quick responses, useful for audience profiling and action validation.

Nike, for instance:

Q. Have you purchased Nike products in the last six months?

• Yes
• No

Note: Dichotomous questions should be used to confirm conjectures and direct respondents to the next question. Remember, even though they’re easy to answer, you don’t know why the user made that choice. So a good practice is to follow up with an open-ended question like, “Why did you purchase/not purchase Nike products in the last six months?”

7. Ranking questions

Everybody has preferences, and when given the option, they would prefer one option over the other. Ranking questions give respondents the ability to rank items – eg, products, features, benefits – by order of importance or preference.

You can not only identify which items are most/least favoured, but also by how much.

For brands like Nike, it helps sort product benefits by priority:

Q. Rank the following in order of importance when buying athletic footwear. (1 = Most important)

• Performance (grip, comfort, support)
• Price
• Brand name/reputation
• Style and design
• Sustainability/eco-friendly materials

Note: Ranking questions need more thinking on the respondent's part, so make sure your option list is short and easy to scan through. Also, the options (eg, brands, products) need to be familiar/recognizable to the respondent.

8. Demographic questions

Demographic survey questions collect background information like age, gender, location (city, state, country), language, income, education, occupation, lifestyle, and more using single questions. For example, “Where do you live?” This helps you understand how your user base is divided across the general populace.

We went with the age group question for Nike:

Q. Which age group do you belong to?

• 18-24
• 25-34
• 35-44
• 45-54
• 55+

Note: Use clear and inclusive answer options for religion, ethnicity, language, etc.

9. Drop-down questions

Drop-down questions are single-choice questions that allow you to include a really long list of options (eg, for countries, languages, and ages) in a sorted, scrollable drop-down menu. To answer these questions, users can simply click the drop-down button and pick the right option.

A drop-down question example for Nike is, “Which sport or activity do you primarily purchase Nike products for?”

Note: With Delve AI, you don’t need to worry about cluttering your survey questionnaire; you can include as many options as you’d like (the image above is for reference only).

10. Slider questions

Slider questions introduce an interactive element that makes answering questions fun for survey participants. First, you get a question: “On a scale of 0 to 100, how likely are you to recommend Nike products to other people?” You get to pick an answer by dragging the marker on the slider to your desired location/option on the numeric scale.

Here’s how the response output for such a question looks for Nike:

Unlike NPS questions, which have a short range of answers, slider questions give you the opportunity to include a broader range of choices.

Note: Label the anchors – endpoints – clearly and have increments in a logical sequence (eg, 0, 10, 20, 30, 40…).

11. Image choice questions

Suppose you’re going through a rebranding and want to ask respondents how well, or if at all, they like your new company logo, brand colors, or typography. Image choice questions can be used to accomplish this. It works similar to multiple-choice questions, but instead of textual options, you use visual ones.

With Delve AI, you can upload and compare all types of imagery for concept testing, marketing campaigns, and ads.

For Nike, we asked the synthetic respondents to pick the creative most likely to make them buy from the given list of brands.

Q. Below are sample marketing visuals from four footwear brands (displayed as images). Which one would make you most likely to consider purchasing the featured product?

• Image A – Nike
• Image B – Adidas
• Image C – Puma
• Image D – New Balance
• Image E – Skechers

Note: Use clear labels to describe your graphics/images, and make sure that the right file is attached to the right question before running your survey.

How To Write Good Survey Questions: Also, Best Practices

The key to writing good survey questions is simple: you need to know the purpose, audience, and end goal of your survey. The Nike survey, for example, was a basic consumer research study conducted to determine the brand's position in the footwear industry.

Your survey should be fine if you do the following:

• Outline your goals and objectives
• Select your target audience
• Draft your survey questions
• Collect the assets/images to be used
• Choose the mode of communication, i.e, online or offline
• Select a survey software for data collection and analysis
• Test a small part of your survey before launch

The last point is important because it helps you test wording and response patterns, and also correct any errors in your survey questionnaire before sending it to other participants. If you don’t know how to ask a question, just go online, and you’ll find many expertly designed survey templates.

It’s important to keep the number of questions to a minimum to avoid survey fatigue. Ask only what users – real or synthetic – can answer and include products, services, or items they are aware of. Survey questions should be straightforward, without much jargon and technical phrasing, so that people know exactly what you’re asking. Make it a point to avoid biased questions that push respondents to agree with something they may not originally agree with, and don’t include assumptions and hypothetical questions.

For the best insights, use a mixture of qualitative and quantitative questions in the survey.

With Delve AI’s synthetic user panels, you don’t need to worry about addressing sensitive topics, where actual people may respond falsely to maintain social conformity. Panels are made up of AI personas; they will give honest responses.

Run Surveys with Delve AI’s Synthetic Research Software

And there you have it. We’ve listed out all the different types of survey questions you can create with Delve AI’s Synthetic Research software, along with the best ways to go about framing them. Now, you can comfortably ask MCQs, open-ended questions, rating scale questions, and more to learn how users perceive your brand or product.

Survey AI-generated personas without the hassles of traditional research. Get started with Delve AI’s Synthetic Survey tool today!