Survey bubble 01

Survey Features

Demographic Questions

Build high-performing surveys using demographic questions!

Get your current survey solution evaluated by our experts.

How many of your target customers live on the east coast? How many of them are millennials? 

This information can help you make strategic decisions about your marketing strategy. But how do you get an answer to such questions? Demographic questions are a good starting point for gathering such data.

In this short article, we will discuss how you can ask demographic survey questions and their advantages.

What is a demographic question?

Playing an integral role in the survey data collection, a demographic question helps to gather information about the respondent’s background. 

By seamlessly identifying qualifiers like the respondent’s age, gender, geographic location, income, family members, marital status, etc., the demographic question makes it easy to define your target audience. 

An accurate picture of your respondents lets you create an effective promotional strategy for your products/services that resonates with them. Survey software, such as Voxco, enables you to create interactive surveys with its drag-and-drop format and identify trends using an advanced data analysis platform

Additional read: Voxco helped Frost & Sullivan conduct 100K surveys across 300 industries.

Example of Demographic question

Survey question 15

Where is a demographic question used?

By gaining insightful data about your respondent’s backgrounds, demographic questions help you understand them better. 

These questions play a key role in segmenting the survey respondents based on who they are, where they are from, and what they do. This is a crucial step to determine the search patterns of the audience and identify their behavior while purchasing products or services online. 

For instance, respondents’ income and geographical factors are important aspects when evaluating the role of technology in their life. 

Since demographics are measurable characteristics, government organizations highly prefer these questions to gain effective insights into the population and its growth rate.

Download Market Research Toolkit

5 MR Templates + 3 Guides

How to ask demographic questions in your survey?

Demographic Questions demographic question

Asking questions about a person’s age, income, or gender can be awkward. So before asking these sensitive questions, check out our tips on how you can write these questions to ensure the respondent feels comfortable answering them. 

1. Age:

Instead of leaving a blank space for the respondent to fill in, give them options with different age ranges. But make sure that these age ranges don’t overlap. 

i) Your options should look like this >> 20 – 30, 31 – 40, 41- 50.

ii) It is also important that you allow respondents to skip the question. So, add a “Prefer not to answer” option. 

2. Gender: 

Gender is a sensitive demographic question, and participants may not want to share this information with you. There are two ways you can as this question. 

i) Allow participants to self-describe. 

ii) Include all options of gender in a drop-down menu with a “Prefer not to answer” option. 

3. Income:

When you want to know how much your customers earn, there is a tactful way of doing it. You can ask about their i) work status and ii) household income. 

Asking about a person’s income may seem intrusive, which may upset the customer. So, it’s better to ask in a roundabout way if this question doesn’t have much impact on your survey objective. 

4. Ethnicity:

A question about ethnicity can help you understand the customer’s behavior. However, it is also a sensitive topic. 

So when you ask an ethnicity question, make sure to be inclusive of all ethnicity. You can start small by asking if the participant belongs to a certain ethnic group.

1. Are you of Asian origin? 

If the participant says “Yes,” you can add skip logic and lead them to the next question. But, if they answer “No,” you can ask them again, but this time with more options.

2. How do you describe your ethnic background?

  • Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish. 
  • Black or African American
  • White
  • Other (Self-describe)
  • Prefer not to say

Additional read: Start writing your survey by following our tips.

These are some of the more than 100+ question types available in Voxco.

See all the question types & robust features Voxco Online has to offer.

What are the advantages of a demographic question?

Demographic Questions demographic question

Identifying profitable customer segments can help a business grow and lead the industry. Demographic survey questions gather data on the audience’s general characteristics. This helps segment respondents into different groups and create unique profiles. 

There are more benefits to conducting demographic surveys. We have mentioned four advantages below. 

Easy to understand: 

As demographic questions are preferred in almost every customer experience survey for collecting data, they’re considered one of the easiest questions to which respondents love to respond. 

Create personas: 

With insights into the respondents’ background (like age, gender, geographic location, and income), using this question type helps to uncover their personas effectively. This can empower you to better understand your respondents by diving into their preferences and opinions. 

Confirm your target audience

Demographic surveys help you identify which customer segments you should target for your upcoming launch. It allows you to uncover the customers who need your product so you can define your target market confidently. 

Uncover trends 

Combining demographic surveys with behavioral or other surveys can help you better identify demand trends and patterns. You can separate the data into demographic groups and look for patterns. This way, you can make informed decisions on how, when, and who you should target.

See how to use a demographic question in a survey with our sample survey.

Conclusion

Demographic data can help you break down your customers into meaningful segments and give more insight into the data. When you combine customers’ survey responses with their demographic data, you will create an accurate picture of your target audience. So, demographic questions should be a part of your survey.

Voxco’s online survey tools can help you design interactive surveys, reach a diverse and wider audience, and analyze data in one platform. 

With 100+ question types, skip-logic, and multilingual capability, you can create an engaging survey that provides you with relevant data. Additionally, advanced survey analytics software and survey text analysis can help uncover hidden insights.

Create Omnichannel Surveys with Voxco

Voxco is trusted by Top 50 Market Research firms, Global Brands & Universities in 40 countries. Voxco offers full omnichannel capability including CATI, Predictive Dialler, Online surveys, offline CAPI, and Panel Management. Check out Voxco Offerings below: 

Voxco Online

Create engaging omnichannel online surveys with advanced skip patterns, multi-media files, automatic device detection and more. 

Read more about Voxco Online Survey Software

Voxco Analytics

Create one click summaries, visual dashboards, uncover key trends and easily share  the report with teams. 

Read more about Voxco Survey Analytics 

Voxco CATI

Maximize CATI ROI with advanced features, hosting options, seamless telephony integration, and flexible pricing. 

Read more on Voxco CATI survey software

Voxco IVR

Voxco IVR can be used as a standalone, self completion survey option or in combination with other data collection modes.

Read more about Voxco IVR Survey Software 

Related Features

Voxco is trusted by Top 50 Market Research firms, Global Brands & Universities in 40 countries. Voxco offers full omnichannel capability including CATI, Predictive Dialler, Online surveys, offline CAPI, and Panel Management.

Follow Voxco on