Editor’s note: Gillian Humphreys is a vice president and a board director of NFO CFgroup, a Toronto research firm. Joanne McNeish is acting director, marketing research at Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa.

Before diving right into the topic of questionnaire design, we would first like to set the stage by describing our overall philosophy to research. We believe that a good researcher, and indeed a good research user, should be a diver who plunges beneath the surface of the information gleaned from customers.

Of course, the realities of time and budget constraints often dictate how deeply we can dive and what equipment we require. Sometimes we need a mouthpiece and mask to skim the surface; other times we’ll become deep sea divers with full scuba equipment. However, it’s imperative before asking your customers a single question that you ask yourself many questions. This leads to the most important part of the research process.

Our focus in this article is on customers, those purchasers of products with whom we already have a relationship. They could be business customers or consumers.

This first step in any research project is the written statement of clear research objectives. This is critical in developing a good working relationship between the ultimate user of the research and the research consultant. Beginning with unclear objectives can end in wasted time, effort and money, ultimately leading to dissatisfaction with the outcome of the research. In addition, the choice of data collection method, the questionnaire content, and the analysis plan are all driven by these objectives. Our guidelines for researchers are:

In some circumstances, the best choice is not to do any research at all. For instance, when the business decision has already been made, or must be made before any results can possibly be available, or when the available budget is simply inadequate for the ty...