Demographic questions for surveys

Where do you live? How old are you? And how healthy are you? Pardon the personal questions, but demographic questions can give you a lot of great information about certain populations. Learn more about customers, clients, and market segments with demographic surveys, and do more to meet the needs of your target audience. Whether you’re developing products, providing health services, understanding public opinion—or even selling cars—knowing more about the demographic makeup of survey respondents can tell you a lot.

A demographic survey collects data about the basic characteristics of the surveyed population. They may be conducted by individual brands, government agencies, research institutions, websites, media agencies, and more. 

Demographic data is often collected to get to know a target audience or customer segment better. This information is used to personalize advertising and marketing campaigns to appeal to precise groups of customers. Demographic surveys are usually conducted along with other market research and are used for classification purposes.

SurveyMonkey demographic surveys can provide users in industries across the public and private sectors with relevant information about any target audience. It can also help you segment audiences with different needs based on income, gender, location, and other factors. Here are a few areas where demographic research can make a large impact:

Demographic and psychographic data can help you shape product and service offerings, determine promotions and pricing, and sort customer groups based on needs and interests. Young, single men and women tend to have different interests and more disposable income than married men and women with young families, for example. If yours is a brick-and-mortar establishment, it’s particularly helpful to get to know your neighbors. If you run your business online, then other demographics will be more important, such as occupation, educational background, and language proficiency. (For more, check out our ultimate guide to DIY market research.)

As you build research projects focused on specific populations, use demographic surveys to confirm that you’ve correctly identified your target audiences. If you need help reaching a certain demographic, SurveyMonkey Audience can help you get the right respondents for your research. Incorporate demographic and psychographic survey questions into your broader research, establishing “control” populations and baseline data. Use relevant demographic data in research proposals and grant applications as well.

Do your patients belong to an ethnic group that has common health issues? What socio-economic factors might impact your patients’ health and well-being? Use demographic questionnaires and health surveys to understand who you are treating in the context of a broader community or environment. If you want to collect sensitive health information, be sure your surveys comply with HIPAA.

Discover the makeup of your school community with demographic questions about gender, income, race, relationship to student, and more. Gain understanding about the educational needs across your school district, and ensure that school programs and funding support all of your students.

Use demographic surveys to better understand how your community works. Is one part of your community older, with many elderly people who may need more ambulance or in-home services? Where do most of your younger families with elementary school-aged children live, and do they have safe bikeways and nearby public parks? Is your church or synagogue meeting the needs of the community that surrounds you? Understand their ethical attitudes versus common norms. Use demographic surveys with anonymized responses for specific neighborhood insights.

Get to know the people who can benefit from your non-profit program the most. Demographics information can help you provide relief for people in areas affected by natural disasters, distribute resources to the underserved, or run programs for families with grave health conditions. Many non-profit programs address the needs of specific demographic populations. Do you understand yours? Is it changing? Aging? Moving? Use demographic surveys from time to time to make sure that your programs align to the evolving needs of those you serve.

Buyer personas

Your business can use demographic surveys as part of developing buyer personas that are accurate for your customer segments. Buyer personas provide the ability to visualize your target customers when developing marketing campaigns, providing customer service, and creating positive customer experiences.

Patterns and trends

Use demographic data to group survey respondents and look for patterns in your market research. You can then test the patterns to look for trends that will allow you to make informed business decisions.

Confirm your audience

Demographic surveys also help to confirm that you are targeting the right audience for your product or service. 

Accurate analysis

Demographic data is important for analyzing survey results. You may find an unusual answer is explained by insights into demographics. For example, a response that indicates limited internet use may be explained by age or location.

Fair representation

Demographics also help you ensure that your market research is being conducted on a population that fairly represents the group you are targeting.

There are standard questions that appear on most demographic surveys. They ask for the most basic data to give you a general picture of your respondents.

Regardless of what information you are seeking, you’ll want to know your participants’ genders. Gender often explains disparate opinions, whether your survey is political, educational, market research, or for another purpose. 

Example:

How would you describe your gender identity?

Age can be a sensitive topic, but it’s an important demographic factor. Consider how individuals of different ages respond to movies, music, products, and marketing and advertising messages. The ability to sort your survey participants by age ensures that you’re targeting the right audience for your product or service. For example, you wouldn’t want to include younger adults in a survey about a retirement community.

Because some respondents may be sensitive about their ages, provide age ranges as answers instead of requiring a numerical answer.

Example:

Which category includes your age?

Another potentially sensitive category, ethnicity may be a necessary piece of information for your survey. Ensure that you include an option to opt out of answering this question. Allow respondents to choose more than one answer as many people have multiracial ethnicity.

Example:

What is your ethnic background? Please check all that apply.

Depending on your business, you may benefit from knowing where your survey participants are located. Local businesses may ask for a city, town, or zip code. National or global businesses may ask for the country, region, or state.

Example:

Where are you located?