10 Survey Design Mistakes That Will Destroy Your Data (And How to Avoid Them)

From leading questions to broken skip logic—fix these before you go to the field

Survey Design
Data Quality
Monitoring & Evaluation
Author

Nichodemus Amollo

Published

November 8, 2025

Why Survey Design Is Underrated

Bad survey instruments:

  • Confuse respondents
  • Overwork enumerators
  • Produce data that’s hard to analyze—or impossible to trust

As a data person, you should care deeply about questionnaire design.

10 Common Mistakes

  1. Double-barreled questions
  2. Leading or loaded wording
  3. Too many open-ended questions
  4. Inconsistent response scales
  5. Missing “Don’t know / Refuse” options
  6. Overlapping ranges
  7. Broken skip logic
  8. Asking for unrealistic recall periods
  9. Using internal jargon or acronyms
  10. Ignoring translation and cultural context

How to Improve Quickly

  • Pilot with:
    • A few respondents
    • At least one experienced enumerator
  • Debrief:
    • Ask enumerators which questions confused people
    • Look at early data for strange patterns

Small investments in instrument design can save weeks of pain in cleaning and analysis.