Surveying Children: Writing Questions

Overall, Dillman’s Survey Principles are supreme when it comes to writing questions. If you have not read his Tailored Design Method book, I highly recommend it. This is the survey bible and they highly relevant regardless of the age of participants. Here are some of the strategies to consider:

1. Use simple over specialized words. For instance, the question “How many occupants does your household have?” should be rewritten as “How many people live in your house?”
2. Fewer words is better.
3. Use complete sentences. Do not ask for “Age: ________” but rather “What is your age?” or “How old are you?”
4. Use simple rather than complex sentences. A complex sentence is one that contains a subordinate clause. For instance, the item “When I am hungry, I eat food.” should be rewritten as “I eat food when I am hungry.”
5. Do not use double-barreled questions. A double-barreled question is really asking two questions in one. For example, an item from the Grit Scale for Children has the item “New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.” Ideas and projects are meant to be synonymous in this case, but they are not necessarily the same thing. This can be confusing for readers.
6. Use positively worded questions rather than negatively worded questions. If you have to reverse-code questions, this is probably not going to be interpreted easily by your participants. Avoid them. If you need another reason, often an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) will result in factors that clump the reverse-coded items together because they are being answered similarly. Often, this does not match the theoretical structure of the scale.
7. Do not make participants say no to mean yes (or vice-versa). For instance, assuming children don’t like naps, they would have to mark ‘favor’ to the following question: “Do you favor or oppose not having to take naps?” Rather, it should be rewritten as “Do you favor or oppose having to take naps?”
8. Avoid vague quantifiers. Vague quantifiers are words like always, often, occasionally, sometimes, and never. For one, not everyone defines these the same; as an example, see a chart of what people thought certain “number words” meant. At least the solution is simple: drop the vague quantifier.
9. Avoid requiring respondents to make calculations. Reduce the mental load of your survey by avoiding calculation questions. For instance, “What percentage of your time at home is spent on the computer?” is a very difficult question to answer. You could change it up by asking something more like, “On the average school day, how many hours do you spend on the computer at home?” If you need to know their time spent on computers during the school week, you can then multiply this by 5.
10. Avoid recall questions unless the question can be directly retrieved from memory. That previous example on hours spent on the computer can be very difficult for younger children. However, note that I added the context of a school day to the question. For an interview, it would be much easier to prompt respondents to get the right answer; for example, you can ask questions like, “What do you do before school? Do you use the computer?” and “What do you do after school? Do you use the computer?” If they do use the computer, you can then use that to figure out how long they spend on it. Overall, provide appropriate time referents and use cognitive design techniques to improve recall (e.g., prompts).
11. Avoid open-ended questions for children. Dillman recommends avoiding open-ended questions when close-ended questions can be used. However, research on surveying children suggests that open-ended questions should probably be avoided for children ages 7-12 due to low response rate (Ogan et al., 2013) but are safer to use for adolescents ages 13-18.[1]

These are just a sample of things to consider when wording questions for children and adolescents, but they all apply when surveying adults as well. Again, read Dillman![1] However, remember to not equate age for developmental level!