Question bank
How we write our questions
Polzy’s question bank holds questions written once, with fixed wording, so a result can be set beside last quarter’s. Here is where they come from, how each one is written and checked, and what keeps the results fair to read.
- Written by Polzy
- Informed by published research
- In six languages
The bank
Questions that keep their words
A result means something only beside another one asked the same way. So every question in the bank has a permanent identity and fixed wording, and its answers compare across surveys and over time.
Fixed wording
A bank question keeps its words. Its answers count as that question’s in every survey that asks it, so a trend compares like with like.
Six languages
Each question is written in English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Arabic. Switching a survey’s language changes the words a person reads, not the question the answer counts towards.
Organised by what it measures
Every scored question files under one topic — manager support, workload, ease of use, value for money — and a topic’s score is the average of its questions. A topic reported on its own rests on at least three questions, not one.
And by the moment it is asked
Each question is written for a moment: a regular pulse, a yearly survey, a new starter’s first weeks, someone leaving, a support request closed, a training finished, an event.
Where they come from
Written by us, informed by research
Every question in the bank is written by Polzy, in our own words. What a question measures, and how it is worded, is informed by published research and by the public-sector surveys that publish their questionnaires and results. This is that research, by area.
Work and wellbeing
Research on job demands and resources, self-determination theory — autonomy, competence and belonging — psychological safety in teams, and organisational justice: whether decisions and treatment are fair.
Public employee surveys
The surveys governments run of their own staff and publish openly — the US Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, the UK Civil Service People Survey and the Australian Public Service Employee Census, with their open data — and the OECD guidelines on measuring well-being.
Customers and service
Research on service quality — being reliable, responsive and caring — on the effort it takes a customer to get something done, and on satisfaction and loyalty.
Products
Usability research on how easy a product is to learn and use, and research on whether it is useful for the job people bring to it.
Training and events
The four levels of training evaluation — reaction, learning, behaviour and results — and research on how what people learn carries over into their work.
How to ask
Survey methodology: how wording, answer scales, translation and the order of questions change the answers people give.
“Informed by” means this research shaped what a question measures and how it is phrased. It does not mean a question was copied from these sources, and none of the organisations named here has reviewed or endorsed Polzy. We do not use questions from commercial questionnaires sold under licence, or from other survey companies.
How a question is written
Rules every question follows
Each question is drafted from a written definition of what it measures — what the topic covers, and what it does not — and checked against these rules.
One idea per question
No “and” joining two things that could get different answers. “My manager is fair and easy to reach” is two questions, so it is written as two.
Plain words
Short sentences — fourteen words at most in English — at an everyday reading level, with no jargon and no idioms, which do not translate.
In the first person
A statement you agree or disagree with is about your own experience: “My manager is clear about what our team should focus on.” Satisfaction is asked as a question: “How satisfied are you with…?”
A scale that fits
Statements are answered on five points from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree, each point labelled. Satisfaction, effort and how often something happens each have a labelled scale of their own.
Neutral, not leading
No question assumes an answer or an experience: never “How great was…”, never “Since the training helped you…”.
Reversed questions: few, and planned
A few questions say the opposite — “My workload is more than I can handle” — so that agreeing with everything stands out. At most one per topic, only in full surveys, never in a short pulse, and turned round before it is scored. Otherwise questions avoid “not”, which people misread.
How a question is checked
From draft to the bank
Every question goes through these steps. The checks with experts, with readers and with real answers carry on as the bank grows.
- 1
Research and definitions
Each topic gets a written definition and the research behind it, before any question is drafted.
- 2
Drafting
Several wordings per topic, written against the rules above, so the weaker ones can be dropped.
- 3
Expert review
An organisational psychologist for workplace questions, customer and user researchers for customer and product questions, and a learning specialist for training and events rate how well each question fits its topic.
- 4
Think-aloud testing
People answer the questions aloud as they read them, in each language, so a word that is misread or a question that is hard to answer shows up before anyone relies on it.
- 5
Professional translation
Translators work from a shared glossary of words like manager, team and workload; an independent back-translation checks the meaning survived; Arabic is checked right to left on the survey page. The bank is already in all six languages; this review of the translations is under way.
- 6
Checking with real answers
Once enough people have answered, figures across many answers — never one person’s — will show the questions that are often skipped, answered the same way by almost everyone, or that do not move with the rest of their topic. Those are reworded or retired, and a translation that is answered differently from the others is checked again.
A question we write is not called validated because it was written with care: that takes evidence from real answers, in every language. In the survey builder, each bank question says what its wording rests on.
Reading the results
What keeps the results fair to read
A privacy floor
Results for a group appear only when enough people answered — three by default, or a higher number your workspace sets — so nobody can work out who said what.
About the privacy floorHow sure each score is
A dot beside a score says how far it could still move and how many people it rests on, so a score from a handful of answers is read as a direction, not a figure.
How sure is this number?Only unedited questions compare
Reword a bank question, or change its type or scale, and it becomes your own: it shows “Edited — no longer compares with other surveys”. Put the words back and it counts again.
Questions from the question bankClose the feedback gap.
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