There are many ways to design survey questions that allow you to collect more actionable data. Forced choice survey questions makes survey respondents choose a response option that indicates a definitive opinion. These questions eliminate Don’t Know and Neutral response options, because they are designed to force respondents to express an opinion or attitude. Forced choice survey questions are usually written in the form of agree/disagree statements with survey scales, or consist of statements where respondents select the one that describes their opinions closest to their true feelings.
Survey research studies generally indicate that excluding Don’t Know and Neutral options doesn’t necessarily change the proportion of responses leaning toward certain sides of a Likert response scale. So these questions can add value, especially when you want to make business decisions based on customer preferences. Just be sure to take into account the two suggestions below if you’re considering forced choice questions during the questionnaire design stage.
1) Make sure that your customer survey sample is familiar with the concepts and products you are asking about, and that there isn’t a significant number of them who might honestly hold ambiguous opinions. If you think a don’t know/neutral option is necessary for your target market, it’s probably best to include one.
2) It is still usually a good idea to include a Not Applicable response choice if there are segments of your survey sample to which the question does not apply (i.e., your email list consists of people other than past customers, respondents haven’t used the type of product or service you’re asking about before, etc.).
Your data collection goal may be to force customers to “take a side,” but not at the expense of producing valid, reliable survey data.
By Tyson Gingery
