I sometimes joke that Survey Monkey et al have made it easier to conduct lousy surveys faster.

Because it is easy and inexpensive to create and distribute questionnaires, people spill them out without much thought.

Common sins include:

• being so long and tedious respondents abandon it midstream or – if incented to complete the survey – answer randomly
• asking people to rate something like expertise where one person’s idea of “intermediate” is another’s idea of “expert”

Sins like these often produce high abandonment rates and misleading results.

Here’s how to avoid them.

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