Write questions about participants

Embedding a small opinion survey in the questions you ask people can help you approach your topic in two ways at once. There are often telling differences between the things people say about a topic directly (by answering questions) and indirectly (by telling stories). You can ask questions like these:

• How do you feel about ___? Do you think it's helpful or harmful?
• Which of these statements about ___ do you agree with most?
• If you could write a law regulating ___, what would it say?
• What do you think causes ___? What would fix it?
• In an ideal world, what would ___ be like?

Asking people to describe their perspectives on the community or organization can reveal useful patterns when paired with the stories they tell about it. You can ask questions like these:

• How good of a job do you think ___ [is/are] doing with ___?
• What do you think ___ will be like in ten years? Why?
• Do people in ___ [listen to each other, cooperate, argue too much, etc]?
• If you want to ___, why is that? If you think about ___, why is that?
• What would you like to see happen in ___?

Questions about roles and groups are useful when you want to look at differences among groups within a community or organization. Some of your questions of this type will be specific to the community or organization, and some will be more general.

In a community, for example, you might ask questions like these:

• Do you belong to any of these community groups?
• Which of these hobbies are important to you?
• How often do you visit ___?
• Where do you get your ___?
• Who do you usually talk to about ___?
• How long have you ___?

In an organization, you might ask questions like these:

• What is your position at ___?
• How long have you been at ___? How long have you been in your current position? What did you do before that?
• Do you work alone or in a team? How large is your team?
• To what extent does your work depend on plans or requests made by other people?
• How predictable is your work? Do you do the same thing every day, or is every day different?
• To what extent would you describe your work as fast-paced?
• Do you supervise other people? If so, how many?

Learning about each storyteller's personality and ways of thinking can help to put their stories into context. You can ask questions like these:

• Are you a big-picture thinker? Or do you tend to wade into the details?
• Are you a careful person, or do you tend to be a little sloppy? How do you feel about that?
• Are you more of a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full person? Maybe somewhere in the middle?
• Does being around people energize or drain you?
• Do people often say that you think in strange or different ways? Or does that never happen to you?
• Do you love doing new things? Or do you do new things only when it's necessary?
• Which of these ways of learning works best for you?
• Do you tell a lot of stories? Or is that something you rarely do?

Questions about demographics can reveal useful patterns when it comes to common influences on perspectives, such as generational differences. You can ask questions like these:

• Which of these age ranges do you fall into?
• What is your ethnic background?
• Do you rent or own your home?
• Which of these living situations best describes yours?
• Do you live in a city, suburb, town, village, or rural area?
• What is your income?
• How much formal education have you received? How about informal education?

Be careful with factual questions. Build a strong case for each one you want to use. Why do you need that information? Could you ask the question in a less precise way that provides more anonymity? For example, if you want to know where people live, what is the largest geographical area you can ask them to describe?

When you are asking about demographics, include non-answer options like "I'm not sure" or "I'd rather not say." Also, make each question optional. Sometimes people don't want to say why they don't want to answer a question. In that case, let them say nothing at all.