Fun Survey Questions That Will Appeal to Respondents

Surveys are a unique way to gather authentic information. Whether anonymous or not, surveys give respondents a safe place to offer an opinion without having to respond in person or in front of a group. In a school setting, students may feel awkward weighing in before their classmates, and in a work setting, employees may feel nervous about giving unbridled feedback face-to-face. Providing respondents with a survey they can complete in private is far less intimidating. Moreover, if you incorporate fun, engaging questions before jumping into the heart of the matter, respondents will inevitably feel more at ease.

Whether you’re looking for engaging ways to get feedback from your students, colleagues, or customers, opinion surveys typically glean the most authentic responses. However, if your line of questioning is too heavy, respondents may hesitate to dive in. Long surveys about class assignments, work matters, and customer satisfaction, might feel boring or daunting.

Get to Know Your Survey Audience

If you’re looking for a better response from your subjects, liven up your surveys with fun, engaging questions. People love to talk about themselves, so icebreaker questions that make respondents think about how they feel will yield better results. Using appealing, witty questions will draw your respondents in, and once you’ve got them hooked, you can incorporate your important research questions.

Try questions like these to draw your subjects in:

Travel Preferences: Adventure, Island, Safari, Cruise, Camping, Road Trip
Dream Job: Actor, Zookeeper, Pilot, Monk, Tour Guide, Scuba Instructor, Librarian
Hobbies: Mountain Climbing, Knitting, Spelunking, Fishing, Calligraphy, Metal Detecting, Scrapbooking
Hidden Talents: Whistling, Flexibility, Yodeling, Irish Dancing, Bilingual, Puzzle Solving, Magic Tricks, Speed Reading
Claims to Fame: Little League World Series Champion, Miss [Insert Town Name], Published Author, Celebrity Encounter
Guilty Pleasures: Chocolate Ice Cream, Reality TV Shows, Sleeping In, Social Media Stalking, Procrastination
Strange Food Combos: French Fries/Milkshakes, Pickles/Ice Cream, Mashed Potatoes/Ketchup, Bologna/Avocado
Two Truths and a Lie: I once ate chocolate chip cookies for breakfast every day for a year, I still sleep with a stuffed animal, and I once performed the National Anthem at an MLB game

Pop Culture Perspectives

Pop culture topics are ones that everyone can get on board with. Not only will these topics engage respondents individually, but they may stir conversation among them too. Imagine the fun your students, colleagues, and customers will have considering some of these pop culture topics.

If you had to nominate one person in pop culture as a Hunger Games tribute, who would it be? Vic Anthony, Carrot Top, Lindsay Lohan, Kristen Stewart, Kanye West
Which house would the Hogwarts Sorting hat choose for you? Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin
Best matchup in a celebrity boxing match:Hiliary vs. Donald, Selena Gomez vs. Hailey Beiber, Nikki Minaj vs. Cardi B
Which celebrity would best play you in a movie about your life? Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Zendaya
What would a reality show about your life be called? “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Tears, Fears, and the Wonder Years,” “My Parents Hate Me,” “What I Wish I Did Yesterday”
Which current reality series would you be a perfect character for? “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” “The Amazing Race,” “Vanderpump Rules,” “Big Brother,” “Below Deck,” etc.
Which “Friends” character are you most like? Explain. Monica because I’m a clean freak and love to cook. Ross because I’m a little nerdy and love dinosaurs. Chandler because I’m always ready with a joke and a quippy comeback.

Suitable For All

If you’re looking for general survey questions that are suitable for all audiences, look no further. These survey questions are sure to elicit interesting answers from your respondents:

• Which superpower would you rather have: invisibility or teleportation?
• Would you rather live in a world without the internet or cell phones?
• If you could fluently speak any other language besides English, what would it be and why?
• Would you rather have the ability to go back in time or into the future?
• Would you rather be better looking or smarter?
• What song would be the best theme for your life?
• If you could choose one major city to live in, which would you choose and why?
• What’s a secret you’ve never shared with someone?
• What’s your best joke and punchline?
• If you could assume the life of any Disney character, who would it be and why?

A Tailored Approach

Besides enticing respondents with thought-provoking questions that they’ll want to answer, you may want to tailor them to particular groups. If you’re looking for fun, on-brand questions that are specific to your audience, questions for students, employees, or customers, these are amusing and insightful:

Fun Survey Questions for Students

• If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
• If you could choose one teacher to pie in the face, who would it be and why?
• What has been your greatest high school memory so far?
• If you could have lunch with a famous person, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask them?
• What’s one thing you wish you knew before starting high school?
• Would you rather be the youngest or oldest student in school?
• Nominate Class Superlatives: Best-Dressed, Class Couple, Most Likely to Succeed, Life of the Party, Best Smile, Celebrity Look-Alike, Most School Spirit, Class Gossip, etc.
• Where should we go on a field trip?
• What’s a new club, sport, or activity you wish our school had?
• If you could change one school rule, which would it be and why?
• What’s one thing that would make our school so much better?
• Who would you like to see as a celebrity principal for a day?
• What’s a great fundraiser idea that you think would make our school loads of money?

Fun Survey Questions for the Workplace

• If you could choose one fictional character to be your coworker, who would it be and why?
• What’s one fun thing we could do each week to take a break from work? Think: Fun Friday, Happy Hour, etc.
• If you could trade jobs for a day with someone in the company, who would it be and why?
• What song would you sing at an office karaoke night?
• If you could have any job in the world, what would it be and why?
• Would you rather be the youngest or oldest person in the office?
• What would make our workspace so much better?
• If you could nominate an employee of the month, who would it be and why?
• What could we do for staff appreciation?
• Which coworker would you most want a shot at in a dunk tank?
• How can management best support you at work?

Fun Survey Questions for Customers

• If our product had a theme song, what would it be?
• If you could choose a celebrity spokesperson to represent our product, who would it be?
• If you could rename our business, what would you call it?
• Tell us your funniest memory while using our product.
• What would our cartoon catchphrase be?
• How long have you been a customer with us?
• Would you recommend us to friends/family? Why or why not?
• What’s a product you wish we carried or a service you wish we offered?
• What kind of swag would love to receive for free?

Help is Here: Coming Up With New Questions

While these questions are fun and engaging, you can easily come up with your own set of interesting survey questions using chatgpt.

‍Chatgpt is a type of artificial intelligence, or AI, that can quickly craft questions (or even entire documents) using prompts from you.

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Consider some of these chatgpt prompts to formulate the best questions for your survey:

• 5 fun survey questions for high school students
• 7 fun survey questions about reading
• 3 catchy survey questions about food
• Create a survey about customer favorites
• Make a list of entertaining survey questions
• 8 survey questions to ask employees about the workplace

Enticing Respondents

A dependable approach to survey questions is to mix fun ones with goal-oriented ones. Draw your respondents in with engaging questions and follow up with the pressing questions you really want answered. One of the many reasons this is a good approach is that the funny questions will allow respondents to lower their guard before getting to the more serious questions. Essentially, the silly questions will relax your audience enough that they’ll be less uptight about answering your intended queries.

Creating a balance in your survey will make it more likely that your audience will see the survey through to the end. As in all things, balance is important to success. If you want a successful survey, balancing the question type with the content type is important too. While you’ll balance content by mixing fun questions with serious ones, you can balance question types by including multiple-choice, open-ended, or short-answer questions.

Besides a variety of question types, let your respondents know why it’s important that they answer honestly. Your survey introduction should indicate why you value your respondent’s answers and how their opinions will inform your practices. People are more apt to genuinely participate if they know their time is valued. If all else fails, incentivizing their responses may also improve participation. Consider adding a homework pass, extra break time, or a discount code to further entice your population.

Use a Trusted Survey Platform

Deciding the best way to disseminate a questionnaire is the last thing to consider in gathering the data you seek. Gone are the days of pencil and paper surveys. There are easy-to-use survey platforms such as Qwary that can help you craft meaningful surveys that will elicit useful data.

Learn more about Qwary and how it can help you create insightful in-product surveys, SMS surveys, website feedback, and beyond. Get started on Qwary to gather the data and analytics you need to perform at your peak.