When it comes to gathering valuable insights from your target audience, surveys and questionnaires are essential research tools. However, they often get mixed up or used interchangeably, which can lead to confusion. While both are effective for collecting data, the key difference between the two can significantly impact the results of your research.
A questionnaire is a simple, straightforward set of questions that helps gather information from individuals, typically focused on a single topic. On the other hand, a survey is a more complex, strategic process that includes not only questionnaires but also the methods of collecting, aggregating, and analysing data from many individuals to gain insights about a group.
Understanding the difference between survey vs questionnaire is crucial for effective data collection. It helps you choose the right tool for your specific research goals, whether you're seeking broad insights from a target audience or more granular data from individuals. In this guide, we'll break down what makes each tool unique, when to use them, and how they can help you make better business decisions.
What Is a Questionnaire?
A questionnaire is the starting point for gathering data. It’s a research tool made up of a set of questions that are given to respondents to collect specific information. Whether you're conducting market research, assessing customer satisfaction, or collecting feedback on a new product, learning how to define and create questionnaires helps you gather better responses from individuals.
The beauty of a questionnaire lies in its simplicity and versatility. It can be as short as a few questions or as long as necessary, depending on what you're trying to understand.
Closed-ended questions provide respondents with predefined options, such as "Yes" or "No," or a multiple-choice selection, making the data easy to quantify. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, allow respondents to provide more detailed, qualitative feedback, offering deeper insights into their opinions and motivations.
Questionnaires are flexible and can be administered in a variety of ways. Whether online, via email, by phone, or even in person, this accessibility makes them a reliable tool for businesses and researchers alike. They are also cost-effective and can be scaled depending on the sample size, making them ideal for gathering initial insights quickly.
However, while a questionnaire is a powerful tool for collecting data, it doesn’t provide the full picture on its own. The data collected from a single questionnaire is typically limited to an individual’s responses.
To generate meaningful insights, that data often needs to be interpreted within a broader survey, where the responses of multiple participants are aggregated, analysed, and compared.
Let’s take a closer look with an example:
Imagine you're gathering feedback from employees about their preferences for remote work technology. A questionnaire might ask a single question like, “What type of technology do you use to work from home?” The response you get would be specific to that person, providing insights into their individual preferences.
However, it doesn’t give you the broader context of how the entire workforce feels about remote work technology. To understand if your employees are satisfied with their tools and identify common issues, you'd need to gather responses from a larger group, analyse the data, and look for trends across the organisation. This is where a survey comes into play.
What Is a Survey?
A survey is a comprehensive research process designed to gather, analyse, and interpret data to uncover trends, patterns, and actionable insights. While a questionnaire is a key component of a survey, the term survey refers to the full process that includes the design of the questionnaire, methods for data collection, aggregation of responses, and data analysis.
Surveys are typically more structured and involve more planning than questionnaires. They are designed to meet specific research objectives and help you gather a broad understanding of a target audience.
By collecting data from a diverse set of respondents, surveys provide insights that apply to a larger population, rather than just an individual. They are ideal for uncovering patterns and trends that can inform strategic decisions.
For example, a company might conduct a survey to measure customer satisfaction across various locations, gathering data from hundreds or even thousands of customers. The survey responses are then aggregated and analysed to reveal patterns that can inform business decisions such as product improvements, customer service strategies, and marketing tactics.
By understanding customer satisfaction on a larger scale, the company can make data-driven adjustments to its operations that have a greater impact.
In another example, a healthcare provider may use a survey to evaluate the effectiveness of a wellness program across its entire workforce. Employees fill out questionnaires that ask about their experiences with the program, and the resulting data is analysed to identify areas for improvement. This more comprehensive approach helps the organisation understand how well the program is working and where enhancements are needed.
Unlike questionnaires, which focus on gathering data from individual respondents, a survey aggregates data from multiple respondents to offer a broader, more complete view of a topic or issue. This makes surveys valuable when you need to understand trends and behaviours in a larger group, such as customers, employees, or the general public.
In short, a survey combines questionnaires with other data collection and analysis methods to offer a comprehensive understanding of a group’s experiences, behaviours, or opinions. The combination of individual responses and aggregated data allows organisations to make informed, strategic decisions based on collective insights.
When to use a survey vs a questionnaire
Choosing between a survey and a questionnaire depends on your research goals and the type of insights you need.
Use a questionnaire when you want to collect specific information from individuals, often around a single topic. This is ideal for gathering targeted feedback, such as a customer’s opinion on a new product feature or an employee’s preference for a specific workplace policy. Questionnaires work well for quick, focused data collection without the need for large-scale analysis.
Use a survey when your goal is to understand broader trends, patterns, or behaviours across a larger group. Surveys allow you to aggregate responses from many participants, analyse the data, and identify insights that can guide strategic decisions. They are best suited for projects like measuring customer satisfaction across multiple regions, evaluating market demand, or tracking changes in brand perception over time.
By selecting the right tool for the job, you can ensure your research produces insights that are both accurate and actionable.
Research Methods for Both
While there are differences to be aware of when discussing survey vs questionnaire, there is also a lot of overlap, including the research methods used to collect data.
To effectively analyse data using surveys and questionnaires, it’s important to understand the different methods that support them. Understand that these examples are not given to illustrate mutual exclusivity– These methods can be used for both questionnaires and surveys:
- Qualitative Research: Explores motivations and behaviours through open-ended questions. Example: A survey asking “Why do you like our product?” for deeper insights.
- Quantitative Research: Collects numerical data to measure trends. Example: A questionnaire asking “How satisfied are you from 1-10?” to quantify satisfaction.
- Descriptive Research: Describes characteristics or behaviours within a group. Example: A survey measuring customer satisfaction levels.
- Analytical Research: Identifies cause-and-effect relationships through data analysis. Example: A survey linking age to purchasing behaviour.
- Applied Research: Focuses on solving real-world problems with practical solutions. Example: A questionnaire gathering feedback to improve safety.
How to design surveys and questionnaires that pay off
If you want to design a survey or questionnaire that yields high-quality data, consider the four tips below.
1. Speak to your audience
Think about your survey audience and how to communicate effectively with them. To get accurate and representative data, use simple language and avoid jargon and acronyms. Apply visuals and iconography strategically to reduce the load on respondent’s working memory and create visual trigger. Additionally, keep your survey questions short and concise, especially on small screens. This reduces scrolling and ensures that your survey questionnaire is designed for mobile.
2. Ask meaningful questions
Make sure you ask questions that respondents can answer. For instance, if you ask a participant about their satisfaction with your product and they have never used your product before, they will either a) abandon the survey or b) offer a disingenuous answer. That being said, asking irrelevant questions is a sure way to compromise the reliability and accuracy of your datasets.
3. Use a mix of question types
Selecting the appropriate question type is crucial for obtaining reliable data. But it is also important to choose the right mix of question types. For example, if you incorporate too many open-ended questions, you may see an uptick in survey dropout. On the other hand, if you rely too heavily on dichotomous questions, your survey questionnaire may not offer meaningful insights.
4. Keep it short
Survey length is integral to data quality. Why? Because if your survey questionnaire takes too long to complete — any longer than 10 minutes, in most cases — participant engagement will drop. Survey respondents will offer disingenuous answers or give up on the questionnaire altogether.
Write better surveys and questionnaires with Kantar
Understanding the difference when it comes to survey vs questionnaire is crucial to getting the data you need. Choosing the right approach ensures that your research provides meaningful insights and drives smart decision-making.
By carefully designing your survey or questionnaire, setting clear survey objectives, and asking the right questions, you can collect the valuable feedback that will guide your business forward. Whether you're gathering broad insights or diving deep into individual responses, using the right tools makes all the difference.
As a vanguard of market research, Kantar equips brands with access to more than 170 million research-ready respondents. To safeguard your data, we employ our proprietary anti-fraud technology. Informed by comprehensive research, this software identifies fraudulence through machine learning. As a result, Kantar sees an average of only 6% of data rejected compared to the industry average of 38%. Additionally, we equip market researchers with the tools needed to design effective survey questionnaires. Our guide on writing open-ended questions, for instance, offers 23 tips for collecting more thoughtful responses.
Designing a survey? Check out our blog 15 Best Practices for More Effective Survey Designs
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