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 Recently, while traveling with my children, I asked my son about one of life's lessons. "What were some of the positives that came out of your experience?" I asked. He went on to tell me about what he had learned. My youngest daughter, age 9, then piped in "Dad, what's positive mean?" "Well, Allie," I said, "positive in this case meant good." Innocent was her reply, "Then why didn't you just say good?" She had me. Why had I seemingly gone out of my way to use the term positive when good would suffice?
This interaction with my daughter serves as a reminder when drafting survey questions. Keep it simple. Larger words sometimes infiltrate our vocabularies without even realizing it (wait, let me try that again). Big words sometimes creep into our everyday lives and we don't even know it. (See? I am learning.) The question we need to ask ourselves from a research perspective is how reliable can survey data be if respondents don't fully understand what we are asking?
It is rare that we compose our survey questions with 9-year olds in mind, but I can't help but wonder if we might be better off if we did. Writing to the level of the average respondent just isn't enough. Consider crafting your questions to the least educated and informed of your target audience and you will rest comfortably knowing that, if your respondents understand your questions, you will understand their answers.
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