How to ask good questions | The Data Coach | #data consultant and educator

Transcript:

Lindsay: [00:00:00] Hi there. My name is Lindsay, I'm The Data Coach, and today we're gonna cover four tips for crafting high quality questions for your surveys, interviews, focus groups, and your online forms.

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Okay, let's get to our writing tips.

My first piece of advice is that before you start drafting questions, make sure that you are really clear on what you wanna know from your audience.

If you're not a hundred percent sure what you wanna know, why it's important, how are you gonna use it, you're gonna end up unintentionally asking vague muddy [00:01:00] questions that don't really produce useful information.

For example, let's say you just put together this amazing workshop for your colleagues about upcoming changes to state policy that are going to affect your organization. If you send out a survey that just asks, "Hey, rate this workshop out of five stars,"

that'll give you a general idea of what people thought about your workshop, but you're not gonna have any idea why some people gave it five stars, why some people gave it three stars.

How can you improve your workshops in the future if you don't really know what went wrong?

But what if you took some time before writing your questions to really think about the feedback that would be most helpful for you, and help you determine if that workshop was successful? You might decide that you want feedback about your facilitation skills, about the visual aids you put together and how well you answered your audience's questions.

You might also wanna know what [00:02:00] topics you covered were the most helpful, what was the least helpful, and how your colleagues might use the content that you shared in their day-to-day work going forward. Do you see how working on those details first will help you craft more specific questions? Those questions are gonna get at the heart of what you're trying to find out, so make sure you spend some time doing that first.

Second, ask about one thing at a time. One thing that I see pretty often is organizations trying to ask their audiences multiple questions at the same time.

So here's an example of a survey question that does this. Did the facilitator create a safe and welcoming learning environment for their students? Yes. No, not sure. Now, safe and welcoming environment is a phrase that a lot of us use to describe a setting that allows people to feel comfortable, feel relaxed, and that they can ask questions freely without judgment.[00:03:00]

It, it almost becomes one word safe, welcoming learning environments. But what if someone thought that? Sure. The facilitator welcomed me, like they said hello , but throughout the session, that person really didn't feel comfortable asking questions or engaging in the conversation because of something the facilitator was doing.

There's no real way for them to answer the question that you proposed, right? As another example, I'll sometimes see this in a list of interview or focus group questions. Can you tell me about a time where you felt frustrated at work? When did it happen? What was the cause? How did you react and what steps did you take to try to resolve the problem?

Here's the thing. I'm still thinking about your first question by the time you've asked your fourth, I didn't hear the rest of it. Remember that everyone processes verbal information at different speeds. So instead of maybe potentially overwhelming people, ask [00:04:00] one key question first. Tell me about a time you felt frustrated at work.

Let people tell you their story and then if there's something you'd like to follow up on or get clarity on, ask one follow up question at a time.

Third tip, avoid using jargon. You know what I'm talking about.

Those phrases and acronyms that we love to throw around in the nonprofit sector to signal we are nonprofit people that are doing nonprofity things. Our CRMs, our RFPs CREs, our CTAs. Your nonprofit probably has a language of its very own. When I was working in public policy, I worked on issues related to children, youth and families, childhood trauma, juvenile justice, all sorts of things.

My projects included the CTTF, uh J-J-D-P-A-S-T-P-P and SCFR.

Do you know what that means? I barely remember what it means. Can you imagine trying to talk to me? Impossible. These [00:05:00] phrases and acronyms will sometimes find their way into our survey and interview questions, and that makes sense, right? This is how we talk and we assume that other people talk like that too.

Don't assume that everyone speaks in the same way that you do, even if you think that they should. Looking at you board members. Spell out your acronyms, define all your jargon, give your audience the best possible chance to provide you with accurate answers that reflect their experiences and opinions.

Last tip, ask for feedback before launching your questions into the universe. One thing that we are taught as professional researchers is before you press send on that survey, or you start scheduling out those focus groups, ask people to review your questions for clarity. For instance, you can send the questions to your team, your department, and ask them for [00:06:00] their feedback.

Just be mindful about that jargon and acronym piece. Though your colleagues speak the same language as you, they may not catch opportunities to clarify certain terms or spell out certain acronyms because they already know what you mean. Another thing you can do is send them to volunteers who are a part of your audience.

So if you are putting together a survey as a part of a program evaluation, maybe you reach out to a couple of program alumni and ask them to take a look at your question list and provide you with any feedback that they have. And then finally we do survey evaluations here at the Data Coach.

You can send us your draft questions. I'll put them through a 20 point checklist, that checks for clarity, any potential biases that may be in your questions and any privacy and confidentiality risks.

You will get a revised survey with explanations for any changes that have been made. Plus I'm available for any follow up questions you may have once you received the revised [00:07:00] version. Whatever you choose to do, just make sure that someone else has eyes on your questions before they go out into the world.

So that's it. Four quick tips for asking better questions for your surveys, interviews, focus groups, and online forms. Please leave any questions that you have in the comments and we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye.