Whether you intend to conduct a survey or simply gather a set of questions, a questionnaire is an essential tool. If you don’t know how to set one up, then turning to preset questionnaire templates is a good option for you.
Read on to discover some of the best resources and survey questionnaire samples you can use for free in 2024.
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Questionnaires vs. Surveys: What’s the Difference?
A questionnaire refers to a set of questions that can be used to gather information. For example, you can create a 10-item questionnaire for a student quiz or when conducting an interview.
On the other hand, a survey involves the process of collecting and analyzing data from specific groups of people. It includes using questionnaires but goes beyond that, incorporating steps like sampling, interpretation, and data analysis.
Let’s take a look at some of the best questionnaire templates you can use.
Business Questionnaire Templates
1. Market Research Survey Questionnaire
Before starting a business or making a business decision, it’s crucial to conduct market research first. This lets you understand your target market, the preferences of your customers, and the current market trends.
The key to creating an effective market research survey questionnaire is to ensure that your questions are clear, concise, and relevant. This free sample survey questionnaire template offers exactly that.
2. Product/Service Satisfaction Survey Questionnaire
Preparing a satisfaction survey questionnaire is essential to collecting customer feedback about their experience with your products or services. This template covers key areas, such as quality, ease of use, customer support, and overall satisfaction.
3. Brand Perception Questionnaire
Are you curious about how your existing and potential clients think about your brand? Clear up the fog by using this brand perception questionnaire template.
With this template, you can ask questions about customers’ first impressions, thoughts on your brand’s communication, and brand loyalty. Download and customize our free question template below!
4. Event Evaluation Questionnaire
Whether you’re organizing a conference, workshop, seminar, or any other type of event, evaluating its success and collecting attendee feedback is crucial for continuous improvement. You can do this by using this event evaluation questionnaire form template.
Employee Questionnaire Templates
1. Interview Questionnaire
If you have a job position available, you want to ensure that you can hire a highly qualified and competitive individual. Filter the best applicants by using this interview questionnaire.
Using this questionnaire format template, you can provide applicants with the opportunity to write their answers directly on the document, eliminating the need for a face-to-face interview. Alternatively, you can use it as a question guide if you prefer to converse with aspiring employees.
2. Employee Satisfaction Survey Questionnaire
Your employees make up the foundation of your workforce. Ensuring they’re well-satisfied in their current positions allows you to avoid sudden resignations and lots of unmanaged work. Know their thoughts by using a simple employee satisfaction survey like this.
3. Training Needs Assessment Questionnaire
Knowing whether your employees can perform their duties effectively is crucial for the smooth operation of your business. Assessing their skills gap then becomes a necessity, and you can do this by utilizing this training needs assessment questionnaire.
School Questionnaire Templates
1. Student Satisfaction Survey Questionnaire
If you’re part of a learning institution, it’s important to consider how your students feel. Specifically, you want to understand their experiences and satisfaction with academic programs, teaching quality, campus facilities, and more. You can achieve this by using our free template!
2. Parent/Guardian Feedback
Parents want to ensure their children receive the best services at any learning institution. Only the parents of your students can provide insight into whether or not you’re meeting their expectations. Discover their thoughts by utilizing this parent and guardian feedback survey questionnaire template.
3. Teacher Evaluation Questionnaire
Maintaining the quality of education and care is crucial for institutions to develop the students’ competencies well. Evaluating the effectiveness and skills of teachers is a vital step in this process.
Let students point out the areas where the instructors can improve and report any issues that require serious attention using this template.
Why Use Our Templates?
In addition to the convenience, here are other reasons why you should use our questionnaire templates:
- Free of cost: Get a copy of our templates for free!
- Comprehensive questions: When designing our templates, we covered various aspects of a specific topic. For example, in our product satisfaction survey template, we included questions not only about product quality but also about customer service.
- Easy to share: Our templates are built on Google Docs, which offers easy sharing options that you can utilize.
Related: How To Share Google Docs [Quick Step-by-Step Guide]
How To Make a Questionnaire in Google Docs
Are you ready to create your own questionnaire in Google Docs? Just follow these simple steps:
1. Download a Template
Creating a questionnaire from scratch can be time-consuming. So, why not download a ready-to-use questionnaire sample template instead? Just pick one from our collection above and click the provided button to kickstart the process.
2. Edit the Sections
Depending on your goals, you might find some questions in the survey question templates irrelevant or lacking. To make edits, you can highlight them and press the “Delete” key on your keyboard. Or, you can add your own questions too.
3. Add Your Logo
It’s important that you add your logo (as part of branding) to the template, especially when using business-related questionnaires. Here are the steps to insert one:
- On your Google Docs questionnaire template, click “Insert” > “Headers & footers” > “Header.”
- Click “Different first page.”
- Choose “Insert” > “Image” and upload your logo from your preferred source.
- Adjust the size and position of the logo as necessary.
- Click outside the header section to save your changes.
Tips For Making a Questionnaire
Ensure that your questionnaires are as effective as possible by applying the following tips:
1. Set Your Questionnaire Goals
Determine what you want to learn from your survey and identify your target audience. Once you know your goals and participants, you can start to develop an appropriate questionnaire that will gather the answers you need.
2. Balance Quality and Conciseness
Make sure to include every essential question in your questionnaire, especially if it can provide meaningful insights.
However, it’s considered bad practice to make questionnaires too long. It encourages reluctance among your participants — they can literally be “shooed away” if it takes more than ten minutes of their time.
To achieve excellent response rates, you have to find the right balance between answer quality and conciseness. Aim to make your questionnaires as short as possible without compromising the necessary information.
3. Select the Appropriate Question Types Based on Your Goals
You can pick any of the question types below, depending on your goals. You can also mix them into one questionnaire to get more insightful answers.
Closed-ended Questions
These are questions that limit respondents to a specific set of options. They are structured, which facilitates easy data analysis and comparison. Examples of closed-ended questions include multiple-choice or checkbox questions.
Open-ended Questions
Open-ended questions allow respondents to provide free-form responses in their own words. They do not restrict participants to predefined options, enabling more detailed and qualitative insights. For example, you can ask questions like, “What did you feel about our product?”
Scale Questions
Scale questions prompt respondents to rate or rank something numerically, such as a 1-to-5 rating. You can use this question type when you want to gauge the opinions, attitudes, and preferences of your participants quantitatively (quantitative = in terms of numbers).
4. Order Your Questions Logically
Keep similar questions together by grouping them in logical sections. This approach makes your questionnaire much more coherent, helping your respondents navigate it more easily.
It’s also good practice to start with general questions. This sets the theme and topic of your questionnaire. After these general questions, you can now move on to more specific questions.
5. Being Single Matters
Do not use “double-barreled” questions or those that need two or more answers at a time. For instance, instead of asking, “Do you find the website visually appealing and easy to navigate?” it is better to separate it into two distinct questions:
- Do you find the website visually appealing?
- Do you find the website easy to navigate?
By presenting each question individually, you eliminate confusion and ensure that respondents can provide clear and specific answers.
6. Gauge Sensitivity
Sensitive questions, such as those about age, religion, nationality, or marital status can provide valuable demographic information. But they can also make people feel uneasy or reluctant to answer.
It’s crucial to consider the timing and placement of sensitive questions in your questionnaire. By incorporating them alongside other relevant questions, you can provide context and help respondents understand why you’re asking for such information. This approach can make respondents feel more comfortable and increase their willingness to share their answers.
When Designing a Questionnaire
While you don’t have to make your questionnaire fancy-looking, keeping it visually appealing is essential to keeping your respondents engaged. Here are four elements that you can incorporate into your questionnaire:
1. Use Monochrome
Opting for different shades of a single color or sticking to a black-and-white palette creates a cohesive and unified look for your questionnaire. It also prevents distractions caused by an excessive variety of colors.
2. Utilize Whitespace
Avoid overcrowding your questionnaire with too many questions on a single page. Leaving whitespace around the questions helps prevent overwhelming your respondents and allows for a more comfortable reading experience.
3. Use Clearly-Defined Sections
Highlighting your section headers can improve the clarity of your questionnaire. It helps divide the questions into logical sections, allowing readers to give accurate answers and navigate the questionnaire more efficiently.
4. Add Tables
One way to make your questionnaire appear well-structured is to put your questions in tables. For instance, you can place the questions in the left column and provide corresponding answer options in the right column. This arrangement enhances the visual organization of the questionnaire and makes it easier for respondents to interpret and respond to the questions.
Benefits of Making Questionnaires
Here are some reasons why you use questionnaires to collect data:
1. Easy Dissemination
Questionnaires created on platforms like Google Docs can be easily shared online, which allows for convenient and accessible data collection from a wide range of respondents.
2. Standardization
Questionnaires ensure that all respondents receive the same set of questions, which allows you to compare their answers under the same conditions.
3. Cost and Time Efficiency
Questionnaires are cost-effective and time-efficient compared to other data collection methods, such as interviews or focus groups. You can send them to multiple respondents at a time.
4. Anonymity and Confidentiality
Respondents often feel more comfortable providing honest and unbiased responses through questionnaires compared to face-to-face interviews. The option to remain anonymous in most questionnaires helps maintain confidentiality and encourages respondents to share their true thoughts and opinions.
5. Flexibility and Versatility
Questionnaires offer flexibility in terms of customization and adaptation to different research objectives and target populations. They can be tailored to specific topics, allowing researchers to gather the desired information effectively.
Final Thoughts
Questionnaires are essential tools that you can use to get your customers’ thoughts or other information from various groups of people. If you want an easy questionnaire-making process, download one of our ready-to-use questionnaire templates, and you’re good to go.
Want to access more advanced resources? Have a look at our premium templates today! Use the code “SSP” to get them at 50% off.
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