One of the best ways to determine how your target audience feels about your company or organization is through quantitative research. Once you understand user opinions, attitudes, behaviors, preferences, and market trends, you can make informed decisions that help you improve your products, services, and every aspect of the customer experience.
In this post, we’ll review what a quantitative research question is, cover the types of quantitative research questions, share examples of quantitative research questions across various fields, and highlight tips for creating a quantitative research survey.
Some background on quantitative research questions
Quantitative research questions collect objective, measurable, numerical data through
- Surveys and questionnaires
- Polls
- Interviews
- Controlled observations
- Reviewing existing research to produce sound statistical analysis
The data includes ratings, counts, measurements, and percentages. Because this data is objective, it’s considered more reliable than qualitative research data.
Quantitative data helps researchers identify trends and patterns. They can use these insights to make informed decisions about company or organizational goals, targets, and strategic improvements to undertake.
Quantitative research questions are useful for measuring many things, but businesses commonly use them to determine overall customer satisfaction, gather feedback on existing products and services, gauge the demand for new products and services, and decide on business improvements to roll out.
Some examples of quantitative research questions include
- How many times per week do you use social media?
- How often do you visit our website?
- How many mobile shopping apps do you use?
Types of quantitative research questions
The three main types of quantitative research questions are descriptive, comparative, and relationship-based. Which type or types you use will depend on the kind of data you want to collect and your research objective.
Descriptive research questions are usually closed-ended, and they elicit participants’ opinions about a specific variable. With these questions, you may ask how often someone uses your product, when they use your product, or how much they’d be willing to pay for a specific product.
Comparative research questions consider differences between groups based on dependable variables. With these questions, you may want to compare brand preferences among men versus women, compare how often individuals use similar products, or assess how your products stack up against competitors’ offerings.
Relationship-based research questions are helpful for gauging trends, causal relationships, or connections between variables. You may develop questions that help you explore how color influences buying decisions for a product or assess the relationship between employee turnover and workplace environment.
Examples of quantitative research questions
Now let’s take a look at some examples of quantitative research questions in the fields of education, health, marketing, and social sciences.
Examples of quantitative research questions in education
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does parental participation in education impact student academic achievement?
- What impact does classroom size have on academic performance? Choose from the following: no impact, limited impact, high impact.
- How many times were you (the student) absent last semester?
- Is the relationship between extracurricular activities and student performance positive, negative, or neutral?
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do study habits impact student grades and test scores?
Examples of quantitative research questions in the mental and physical health fields
- On a scale of 1–10, how often do you feel stressed?
- How many times per week do you engage in activities to improve your mental well-being?
- How frequently do you exercise?
- Do you have a health insurance plan?
- How would you rate the care you received on your last visit with a primary care provider?
- What is the relationship between stress levels and physical health in retirees?
- On average, how many times per year do you visit a healthcare provider or facility?
Examples of quantitative research questions in marketing
- How often do you make buying decisions based on advertising or marketing campaigns?
- How often do you use products in this category?
- On a scale of 1–10, how satisfied are you with the quality of this product?
- On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend this product to others?
- How much are you willing to pay for this product?
- Which product features are the most important to you when making buying decisions in this category?
- How much do customer reviews impact your buying decisions?
- What is your preferred way to purchase products in this category (online or in the store)?
Examples of quantitative research questions in social sciences
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does income inequality impact academic performance?
- To what extent is there still a gender imbalance in pay/wages? Rate your answer on a scale of 1 to 5.
- To what degree does race impact rates of mental health diagnosis in adults? Rate your answer on a scale of 1 to 5.
- Does gender affect an individual’s contribution to household tasks?
Tips for creating quantitative research questions
Now that we’ve seen some examples, let’s review a few tips for creating your own quantitative research questions.
Since you’re looking for concrete data, ask questions such as
- How many?
- How often?
- How much?
- What percentage?
- What proportion?
Let’s look at some concrete examples:
- How much is your weekly grocery budget?
- How many times per month do you visit a brick-and-mortar store?
- What percentage of your monthly income is spent on housing?
To increase the quality of your questions and ensure the best results
- Use different question types (i.e., descriptive, comparative, relationship-based).
- Keep the survey or questionnaire as short as you can without sacrificing data collection.
- Don’t use leading or biased questions.
- Use clear language and avoid jargon.
- Address one topic per question, starting with easier questions first to build momentum.
- Be sure to get approvals and informed consent before proceeding.
How to create a quantitative research survey
- Select the type of quantitative research question or questions from among the three discussed above — descriptive, comparative, or relationship-based — based on your research objective.
- Identify the type of variable you’re trying to measure — either independent (the variable being manipulated) or dependent (the outcome variable) — and the target audience. Measurement variables include nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
- Decide on the structure of your research questions based on the type of questions you’ll be presenting. Structure pertains to variables, groups, and the order of the variables and groups in the questions.
- Draft your research questions and finalize your survey.
If you’re interested in learning more, we offer a more in-depth look at quantitative market research best practices. Also, check out our detailed, step-by-step guide on how to do market research.
You can build beautiful, easy-to-use, fully customizable surveys using Jotform’s premade survey templates or create them from scratch — no coding required. Tailor your surveys to match your business and your specific goals, and even share, collect, and analyze your survey results with our free online survey maker.
If you want to gather invaluable insights into user behavior, opinions, attitudes, and preferences, quantitative research is a great way to go about it. Jotform’s robust survey and questionnaire tools make it easy to get started.
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