You don’t want inaccurate survey results by asking the double-barreled question, right? Poorly phrased questions are probably the best way to ruin your survey. If you don’t care about how you formulate the survey, you may end up ruining the validity of your survey.
Quiz and Survey Master is an amazing WordPress survey plugin, that helps you in creating different types of surveys. It has numerous options, using which you can optimize your survey.
In this blog, we will show you the meaning of the double-barreled question, their example, and how you can use Quiz and Survey Master to avoid it.
Table of Contents
What Is a Double-Barreled Question?
A double-barreled question, a compound question, or a double-ended question, is a combination of two different questions in one and allows only a single answer. It can occur entirely on accident or maybe due to general carelessness or lack of proofreading. Many times it happens because the survey creators want to keep the survey short and intentionally or unintentionally they create double-barreled questions.
When you touch on two different issues in the same question and don’t have room for respective opinions, there are chances of incorrect interpretation. A double-barreled question creeps its way into the survey and affects the accuracy of results.
Most of the time, you will find a double-barreled question with “and”. It is not the obvious rule as it can be used in normal questions also. Let’s see some of the compound question examples.
Double-Barreled Question Examples
- How satisfied are you with your workers’ compensation and environment?
As you can see in the above question, there are two different things mentioned in one question. A respondent might have good compensation but not feel the work environment is a perfect fit for him/her. Or maybe the paycheck is less and the working environment is great.
In this situation, how someone is supposed to interpret the question? So, that’s why its more accurate to ask two separate questions, likely,
Separate questions:
How satisfied are you with the work environment?
How satisfied are you with the compensation?
- Are you a hard-working employee, who is never late?
The above question might work if you are looking for both qualities in the employee. But might not go well for a hard-working employee who is sometimes stuck in some work and get late. This question should also be asked in two different parts as well,
Separate questions:
Are you a hard-working employee?
Are you ever late for work?
- “Which actor won an Oscar for Best Actor and also directed a critically acclaimed film?”
This question combines two distinct ideas: winning an Oscar for Best Actor and directing a critically acclaimed film. To avoid double-barreled questions, it would be better to separate them into two individual questions:
Separate questions:
Which actor won an Oscar for Best Actor?
Which director directed a critically acclaimed film?
By separating the ideas into distinct questions, you allow quiz takers to provide accurate and specific responses, making the quiz more effective.
How to Avoid Them?
Quiz and Survey Master is a WordPress survey plugin, that helps you to deal with double-barreled questions in a survey. It has various options using which you can convey a clear idea to your respondents.
The “Questions” tab, has 15 different question types which you can use to make questions more clear. It also has different answer types as well. Quiz and Survey Master have various other options to optimize the survey.
Related: How to Create a Customer Satisfaction Survey in WordPress (4 Easy Steps)
Things to Take Care Of
If you don’t want inaccuracy in results, because of poorly phrased questions, you should ignore, double-barreled questions. These are the few tips that you can use to avoid double-barreled questions:
- Avoid shortening the survey by mixing improper questions.
- Separate the questions which you think might have different answers
- Proof-read the survey
- Pre-test the survey before publishing
Other Common Survey Question Mistakes:
Leading Questions
Leading questions is another survey fallacy. They assume the users and force them to answer they might not agree. For instance,
In the past how many years have you been driving a car?
Since this question assumes that the respondent has a car, a response from a bike owner or any other vehicle owner might not lead to the proper survey data. The best way to tackle leading questions is to use conditional logic.
When you use conditional logic, there will be a screening of questions based on the user’s response.
Ambiguous Questions
Questions that are too broad and not specific are known as ambiguous questions. Ambiguous questions not only slow respondents down as they get confused over the meaning of the question, but can also impact the accuracy of answers.
Have clarity and specificity in your survey questions and avoid questions in which users might get confused.
Confusing Questions
Confusing questions are those questions that are poorly phrased. You don’t want your users to get confused about the meaning of the question, so use clear and correct language that merely conveys your message. If a user gets confused, there is a high chance that they might leave the survey midway.
FAQs
What is a double-barreled question example?
Example of a double-barreled question: How satisfied are you with your workers’ compensation and environment?
this question contains two different questions which are:
How satisfied are you with the work environment?
How satisfied are you with the compensation?
What is a double-barreled question and a leading question?
A double-barreled question, a compound question, or a double-ended question, is a combination of two different questions in one and allows only a single answer. It can occur entirely on accident or maybe due to general carelessness or lack of proofreading. Whereas, Leading questions is another survey fallacy. They assume the users and force them to answer they might not agree. For instance, In the past how many years have you been driving a car? Since this question assumes that the respondent has a car, a response from a bike owner or any other vehicle owner might not lead to the proper survey data. The best way to tackle leading questions is to use conditional logic.
What is a double-ended question?
A double-ended question combines two distinct inquiries into one and accepts only one response. It could happen purely by accident, or it might be brought on by a lack of care or proofreading in general.
Why should you avoid double Barrelled questions?
Double-barreled inquiries have the drawback of creating misunderstanding. Because they are unsure of which of the two questions to answer, respondents feel perplexed. The survey designers are then perplexed by the findings when it comes time to assess the responses.
Conclusion
We hope this blog has helped you in identifying a double-barreled question. Now that you know what is a double-barreled question and how you should avoid it, you should use these tips and make an amazing survey for your website. Quality survey questions need to be formulated in a way that makes respondents understand the topic easily.
Quiz and Survey Master also offer you various addon for your service. We recommend QSM Pro Bundle, as it has various useful addons which will make your work a lot easier.
