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    Demographic Question

    Demographic questions collect background information about respondents (age, gender, role, company size, region) to enable segmentation and weighting.

    Demographics are the foundation of segmentation but should be collected sparingly and placed at the end of the survey — front-loading them depresses completion 4-9% per question. Privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, India DPDP) treat some demographics as sensitive personal data and require explicit consent and minimization. Best practices: only ask demographics you'll actually use in analysis, provide 'Prefer not to say' on sensitive items, follow inclusive answer-option standards (e.g., gender with self-describe and prefer-not-to-say), and use existing CRM data when possible to avoid asking at all.

    Example

    B2B SaaS survey demographics: role (PM / Eng / Marketing / Sales / Ops / Other), company size (1-10 / 11-50 / 51-200 / 201-1000 / 1000+), tenure as customer (<3mo / 3-12mo / 1-2yr / 2yr+). 4 questions, placed last, completion drop attributable to demographics: 3.2%.

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    Related terms

    Closed-Ended Question

    A closed-ended question presents respondents with a fixed set of answer choices to select from.

    Stratified Sampling

    Stratified sampling divides the population into mutually exclusive subgroups (strata) and samples randomly within each, ensuring proportional or oversampled representation.

    Matrix Question

    A matrix question (or grid question) displays multiple sub-questions sharing the same response scale in a table, letting respondents rate many items efficiently.

    Branching Logic

    Branching logic (conditional logic) routes respondents to different follow-up questions based on their previous answers, creating personalized survey paths.

    Anonymous Survey

    An anonymous survey collects responses without any personally identifying information.

    Open-Ended Question

    An open-ended question allows respondents to answer in their own words with free-text input rather than choosing from pre-defined options.