The structure and flow of topics, sequencing of questions, and the writing style are all tools that the researcher can use to make the survey more friendly to the respondent.

Structure your survey using what is called the "funnel" technique. Start with broad, general interest questions that are easy for the respondent to answer. These questions serve to warm up the respondent and get them involved in the survey. In the middle of the survey are placed the most difficult questions, those that take time to think about, and those that are of less general interest. At the end of the survey, we again place general questions that are easier to answer and of broad interest and application. Typically, these last questions include demographic and other classification questions.

Keep your Survey Short. Surveys should be kept short and to the point. Most long surveys are not completed. A quick look at a survey containing page after page of boring questions produces a response of "there is no way I'm going to complete this thing". If a questionnaire is long, the person must either be very interested in the topic, a true bleeding heart, an employee, or paid for their time. Internet surveys have some advantage because the respondent will often not see all of the survey at once. However if your survey sends them page after page of questions, beware, your response rate will drop off dramatically.

How long is too long? The general rule of thumb is to keep the survey short, typically less than five minutes. This translates into about 15 questions. The average respondent is able to complete about 3 multiple choice questions per minute. An open ended text response question counts for about three multiple choice questions, depending, of course, on the difficulty of the question. While only a rule of thumb, this formula will accurately predict the limits of your survey.

Writing Style: My survey research professor of many years ago continually pressured me to decrease the level of sophistication in my survey writing: "9-11th grade level" he used to say. Don't use big words, use simple sentences and simple choices for the answers. Simplicity is still is the best