Many times, you may have listened that companies, firms, and businesses use to conduct a yearly or monthly survey and you may be thinking that what is a survey? And what’s the purpose of a survey? This blog will help you to understand what is survey and the pros and cons of multiple-choice questions in a survey questionnaire.
What is a survey?
This is a type of research method which is widely used to collect information from a selected group or groups. There are various types and patterns to survey online surveys, face-to-face surveys, email surveys, etc.
There could be multiple purposes to conduct a survey. For instance, to boost sales, increase the total revenue, and improve the customer experience. In general terms survey is used to find a solution to any problematic situation.
What are multiple-choice survey questions?
You may get an idea from the word multiple which means many and choice means you have a right to select or pick. Therefore, the Multiple-Choice Questions are based on different options that are related to the question and you have to select any one answer from the given option. Sometimes it depends on whether you have to select only one answer or two refereeing to the instructions given by the surveyor: the one who conducts the survey.
Now you are quite clear about what is a multiple-choice survey question. You must hold on it is not enough information. You must know the benefits of placing MCQs in your survey or questionnaire. Let’s discuss them one by one before wasting more time.
What are the advantages of posing multiple-choice questions in surveys?
You may be thinking that what makes MCQs most common to use in surveys. This is a very basic question because they are less time-consuming and straightforward. You do not need to think and write about but instead, you have to only circle or tick any option which you think would be correct or most suitable.
Simple and quick results
The first advantage is that it is a very much simple and very fast way of conducting research data. This will fairly treat the feedback of respondents because the data is to be converted into quantitative data. For instance, in research work whenever the MCQs based questions are asked the researcher provides different weightage to the options
Later on, the researchers run all the numerical data on different software like SPPS, and E-views to do different analyses and draw conclusions.
High-reach
Approximately one in five people prefer to complete the surveys via their smartphone device and prefer MCQ-based questions to answers. In this context, google documents had to make it easy for the researchers to conduct surveys from a large population. While sitting at your home you can send your survey to your targeted audience.
Besides, in comparison to the other types of details survey questions like open-ended questions are time-consuming. There the respondent may be getting bored while answering the large questions and composing his or her argument.
What are the disadvantages of posing multiple-choice questions in surveys?
There are always two sides to a coin head and tail. Similarly, when there are advantages there must be some disadvantages also. Let’s discuss them.
Manipulate the respondent to answer in a certain way
One of the biggest detriments of multiple-choice questions in a survey is the manipulation of respondents. The questions are designed in such a format and structure that the answers became pre-defined. This may be some sort of forcing the answers and accordingly the options should be selected.
The researcher always puts the options which he or she thinks are the most relevant and authentic but maybe the respondent does not perceive the options in the same way. This will lead to a clash of opinions and maybe the respondent does not take an interest to participate or he may not provide the true information.
Time-consuming to design
The second most disadvantage is that it needs many efforts to design the multiple-choice survey questions. The researcher needs to select the relevant options for the questions. If we do the calculation the researcher is going to ask 20 questions in a survey. Then he must need at least four most relevant options to select so 20 x 4= 80 researcher needs 80 relevant options.
If the researcher is researching the giant firm and it is some sort of yearly survey so you can assume how much it will take to just design a questionnaire.
Conclusion
This was all about the MCQ’s advantages and disadvantages. This will help you with your research work too, whenever you may be thinking to conduct research you will have all the options in front of you. This helps you to manage your time that how long it will take you to make a questionnaire and what is the effective way of data collection.
