Asking Background Questions
Background questions collect demographic information about respondents to enable analysis and comparison of results between different groups within the organisation.
Add Background Questions to the Survey
Background questions are added to the survey just like any other questions and are asked to all respondents.
It’s important to ensure that the background questions included are relevant to the purpose of the survey and that they are kept to a minimum. Too many background questions may make respondents feel uncomfortable and/or cause the survey to feel too long. These questions are preferably placed at the end to avoid influencing the respondents’ answers.
📌 Step-by-step – Create a survey and add questions
To ensure accurate and up-to-date data on age and time of employment, these should be included as questions in the survey. The same applies to gender — respondents should be given the opportunity to self-identify rather than be categorised through a variable.
Background Questions in Brilliant’s Employee Survey
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How long have you been working at the organisation?
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What gender do you identify yourself as?
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What is your age?
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Do you see yourself working at the organisation in two years?
- Do you in your team work actively with the results from the employee survey?
Creating background questions
Background questions work a bit differently from other questions and currently need to be created and added to your library by your friends at Brilliant.
📌 Contact Customer Care by email here.
Would you rather use background variables? This requires that the information is structured and can be included in the organisational structure.
📌 More about background variables
📌 Read more about background variables vs. background questions
Standard anonymity rules apply to all background information, regardless of whether it is collected through variables or questions.