After deciding who and what we are asking we next had to figure out how we are going to ask the questions to get the answers that we are looking for. This does not mean that we crafted the questions in order to get specific answers, but it does mean that we crafted the questions in order to only be asking questions that would allow the participants to answer in a way that meets our objectives. The best way to explain this step is to show it as opposed to only attempting to describe it.

Objective example: See if the participants would be willing to and want to use social media for class.

Example Question #1: Do you use social media and if so, which ones?

Example Question #2: Do you use social media and if so, which ones? Would you like to use social media to interact with your class?

There is no difference in the first questions in these examples, but adding the second question in the second example gives us what we are actually looking for. The first question is only asking what social sites they use, but that does not ask whether they would be willing to use that social media in a class. For instance, I use Twitter a lot, but rarely would I use it for a class. Either way, this is not what we are hoping to find out. The objective wanted to know if the participant would use social media for a course, nothing else.

Crafting questions is often a forgotten skill and when it comes to creating tests and surveys it is too often overlooked. Questions need to be crafted in such a way that they do not guide the user to a specific answer, but at the same times it does get to the root of what you are trying to answer.