As Yogi Berra once said, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”  If you’re a respondent filling out a survey and you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll likely be looking for the nearest off-ramp before you’ve completed the questionnaire.

In my opinion, filling out a questionnaire is like taking a journey.  If you agree with this analogy then you’ll also agree that every substantial trip requires a road map. In the case of a questionnaire, this amounts to a brief description in the introduction of the topics that are going to be covered.  Along the way, I like to give respondents various sign-posts so they know how they’re doing.  I do this be creating titled sub-sections so that respondents know how far along in the journey they’ve gone.

Sure, most online surveys provide aprogress bar (i.e. an odometer), but I believe pointing out the sights along the way helps make the journey a bit more enjoyable.