Surveys & Questionnaires
Learn when to use surveys, how to design them effectively, and how to extract actionable insights from quantitative data
Your Progress
Section 1 of 5Interviews Find Problems, Surveys Measure Them
You just learned interviews—deep, qualitative conversations with 5-15 users. Surveys are the opposite: shallow, quantitative questions sent to hundreds or thousands. Neither is "better." They solve different problems. Use the wrong method and you waste time building the wrong thing.
The Golden Rule
Use interviews to discover what you don\'t know.
Use surveys to measure what you already suspect.
Example: Interviews reveal "users struggle with X." Survey confirms "73% of users struggle with X" and quantifies the pain.
Survey vs Interview: Quick Comparison
| Aspect | 📋 Surveys | 💬 Interviews |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | 📊Hundreds to thousands | 👥5-15 people |
| Depth | 🏊♂️Surface-level insights | 🤿Deep, contextual understanding |
| Cost | 💵$0-500 | 💰$1,500-5,000+ |
| Time | ⚡1-2 weeks | 🐌4-6 weeks |
| Best For | 📈Quantifying known problems | 🔍Discovering unknown problems |
| Data Type | 🔢Numbers, percentages, trends | 💬Stories, quotes, context |
When Should You Use Each?
Click a scenario to see the recommendation:
The Survey Paradox
Surveys are easy to create, hard to do well. Anyone can make a Google Form in 10 minutes. But bad surveys produce garbage data that leads to bad decisions.
Common mistakes: Leading questions ("Don\'t you think...?"), vague scales ("Rate your satisfaction"), too many questions, asking about hypothetical future behavior ("Would you pay...?"). We\'ll fix all of these in this module.
What You\'ll Learn
📋 Survey Design
How to structure surveys for maximum response rate and data quality. Length, flow, question types.
✍️ Writing Questions
Craft clear, unbiased questions that get honest answers. Avoid leading, vague, or double-barreled questions.
📊 Distribution & Analysis
Where to send surveys, how many responses you need, and how to analyze results for insights.
🚫 Common Mistakes
Recognize and avoid the mistakes that ruin survey data and lead to false conclusions.
Key Takeaways
- •Interviews discover unknown problems (qualitative, deep, small sample). Surveys measure known problems (quantitative, shallow, large sample).
- •Use surveys when you need to quantify: feature preferences, satisfaction levels, problem frequency, or product-market fit.
- •Surveys are easy to create but hard to do well. Bad questions = garbage data = bad decisions.
- •Best practice: Start with interviews to find problems, then survey to measure how widespread they are.