Writing good assessment questions is crucial for being able to manage your organization’s knowledge base. If your questions are poorly written, you won’t be able to collect accurate information. Hence, here’s how to write good assessment questions.

#1 Align the Questions with the Objectives

The first thing you should do is align the questions with the objectives. Think about the aims you are pursuing with the questionnaire. If these assessment questions are part of something much bigger, you need to keep in mind the bigger picture and adjust your questions according to it.

#2 Use the Right Questions Types

The next thing you need to do is use the right question types. Depending on the information you want to get, you will need to be using the right question types to get this information. For example, if you need a longer answer or have too many options to list, make the question open-ended so that the person can reply to it with the right information on their own. At the same time, some questions work better as multiple-choice rather than open-ended.

#3 Keep Answer Options Around the Same Length

Though it’s important to mind your questions, you should also think about the answers you provide, especially in multiple-choice questions. As Elizabeth Jones from the custom writing reviews site Online Writers Rating says, “Make sure that your answers are all around the same length. This will make them equally possible for the respondents and won’t make your respondents lean to longer (or shorter) answers rather than choosing the right ones instead.”

#4 Avoid Using Your Biases When Making Questions

One issue that many knowledge managers encounter when making assessment questions is that they intentionally or unintentionally start using their biases. This leads to the questions being increasingly inaccurate or inherently biased which makes the answers flawed as well. This is why you must avoid using your biases when making questions at all cost. After all, you don’t want to have questions that won’t do you any good during the assessment.

#5 Don’t Ask Unrealistic Questions or Use Unrealistic Situations

Another issue you may encounter when creating the questions is that you will start asking unrealistic questions or using unrealistic situations either consciously or unconsciously. Always ask yourself whether what you are talking about makes sense and is relevant to the assessment and the objectives. If it isn’t, then you probably shouldn’t be asking the question you want to include.

#6 Be as Clear and as Precise as Possible

An obvious thing you should do when creating your assessment questions is be as clear and as precise as possible. As William Atkins from the writing services reviews site Best Writers Online notes, “You should always use terms that won’t confuse your respondents. Don’t use complex or rarely used phrases and tend to stick to words that don’t have multiple meanings. You absolutely need to be clear with what you mean.”

#7 Keep the Tone Consistent Throughout the Questions

To make your entire questionnaire or survey feel uniform, you need to keep the tone consistent throughout the questions. Instead of being friendly and fun in one part and serious and professional in another, stick to a single approach and make sure that your respondents are immersed into the survey with the help of the tone you are using.

#8 Check Spelling and Grammatical Errors

Once all of your assessment questions are complete, the best thing you can do is check their spelling and grammatical errors (if there are any). This will ensure that your questionnaire is fully ready to be presented to the respondents and shouldn’t be reworked, edited, or rewritten again (i.e. you have the final version ready).

#9 Have Someone Else Check the Questions

That being said, before you can consider your assessment questions their final version, you need to have someone else check the questions too and see if they understand everything or notice any errors. This will ensure that you aren’t missing anything important which can happen when you are reading the text over and over again.

Final Thoughts

All in all, writing good assessment questions may take some time, but you will definitely succeed with the task once you practice a little. Use the tips in this article to perfect your writing skills and start creating better assessment questions.

~~~

Bio: Frank Hamilton

Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at essay review service Writing Judge. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves cooking and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.