A survey question before and after: what I changed and why
What makes a survey question good?
Some say it’s about accuracy – stay neutral, don't bias the respondent.
Others say it's about depth – push for insight, avoid shallow answers.
I think it’s about ease.
The easier something is to read, the more people will engage with it. I’ve never seen a survey question that was both hard to read and insightful.
For example, consider this question from a Roast I did recently.
Read it out loud.
"How often do you currently consume sleep aids (pills, gummies, drops, etc.)?"
You’ll hear what I call "survey voice” – the slightly stiff tone that creeps into survey writing and makes questions harder to answer than they need to be.
Nobody says they "consume" supplements. And the question stacks two time cues ("often" and "currently") without needing either.
Now read this.
"Do you take sleep aids?"
That’s it.
Notice how this version sounds like something you'd actually say.
That’s what a good question should sound like — not neutral, not deep. Just easy.
- "Currently consume" is survey voice — nobody talks like this
- Stacking two time cues ("how often" and "currently") adds friction without adding meaning
- Response options are hard to scan — they mix vague labels with numbers, forcing the eye to jump back and forth
- "Do you take" replaces "how often do you currently consume" — plain language, one time cue
- Replaced frequency options with Yes/No for easier scanning — frequency gets its own follow-up question
In the Roast, I suggestion two more changes that are worth mentioning here.
First, I replaced the frequency scale with “Yes / No.” Deciding whether you take sleep aids and how often you take them are two separate tasks, and a good question only asks respondents to do one thing at a time. Frequency gets its own followup.
Second, I dropped the parenthetical examples — clutter, mostly, since most people already know what a sleep aid is. Plus the survey asks about specific types later.
Survey voice doesn't come from laziness.
It comes from work. Spend enough time in professional environments and jargon clings to you like campfire smoke.
You stop noticing it. Your colleagues stop noticing it.
But your respondents weren't at the fire. They notice.
If you want an outside perspective, that's what a Survey Roast is for. Send me your survey draft, and I’ll tell you whether your questions pass the ease test.
You’ll get a 15-minute Loom plus a Google Doc with copy-and-paste edits and specific suggestions to improve your data quality, just like the one above.
For $145.
Cheers,
Sam