Which of the following are demographic data that researchers consider when studying?

Demographic survey questions: what they are and why you need them

Learn how background characteristics of a determined audience influence consumer sentiment and behaviors.

Where do you live? What do you do? How much do you earn? Pardon the personal questions, but gathering demographic information from questions like these is a great way to better understand your audience.

Demographic information allows you to better understand certain background characteristics of an audience, whether it’s their age, race, ethnicity, income, work situation, marital status, etc. By asking demographic questions in surveys, you can gather demographic information about current and potential customers at scale, and in turn, help you design a market segmentation strategy to reach the right clients.

What’s the definition of demographic survey questions? And more importantly, how should you use them in your surveys? Get answers to these questions and more in this article, with detailed tips for implementing them, and tools to analyze demographic information. You’ll also find specific sample survey questions and demographic examples that you can apply in your own questionnaire.

When to ask demographic questions

It’s best to ask demographic questions if the information is necessary for your research. Try to avoid including the basic questions like age, race, gender, and marital status that many respondents might be familiar with unless it’s absolutely necessary. While it’s great to establish a baseline demographic, you also want to avoid survey fatigue, where respondents grow tired of answering too many questions. Always build your questionnaire with the objective of providing relevant insights.

Where to put demographic questions in a survey

Whether you think demographic questions should be placed at the beginning or end of a questionnaire depends on how sensitive the question is. For instance, if you need to know your audience’s income level, then it’s probably best not to lead with that question. But if you need to know the respondent’s age, that information is less likely to be as sensitive and can be placed at the beginning of your survey along with the name–unless you’re conducting an anonymous survey.

Why demographic information is important 

Marketers are one group of professionals who have a lot to gain from asking demographic questions.

The more they know about their target population, the higher the chances their messaging will resonate with their desired audience.

Think of how different your marketing efforts would be if you knew that most of your target population is composed of married men in a high-income bracket rather than single female college students. Or what if you were aiming for male retirees in California instead of female executives in the Midwest? Knowing a little about your target audience can make a big difference.

This kind of information is useful in many scenarios: You can benefit from it when developing products, measuring ad effectiveness, providing health services, understanding public opinion—even selling cars.

Anyone—regardless of their sector or industry—can benefit from finding relevant information about their audiences with SurveyMonkey demographic surveys.

The questions from SurveyMonkey’s demographic survey templates allow you to segment audiences on the basis of income, gender, location, and other factors.

Visit this link to find several use-cases for running demographic research.

Develop audience and buyer personas

A buyer persona represents your buying audience. With a buyer persona, you’re generalizing who your ideal customer is along with their likes, dislikes, and buying habits. 

Identify trends

Demographic questions allow you to find trends in the market that can help you reposition your business to remain relevant. For instance, if sales drop, demographic data can tell you if you’re priced too high for a particular group.

Understand your target audience

Delving into the psychology of a target audience can help you know your audience better. The right experience management platform can inform you why people prefer one brand over another.

Confirm the validity of responses

Using demographic questions helps you target the right buying audience. For instance, you might discover women prefer your product more than men. This information could be very helpful if you intended to market to men. 

How do you collect demographic information?

Demographic information examples include: age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education, and employment. You can easily and effectively collect these types of information with survey questions.

Now, what do all these examples have in common? They’re all concrete characteristics that help narrow down which market segment the people in your target audience best fit into. That means you can split a larger group into subgroups based on, say, income or education level. Demographic questions are key to this process, but why do market segmentation in the first place?

Demographic survey question examples

SurveyMonkey has many expert-designed survey templates you can use straight out of the box, or as a reference to build your own customized questionnaire.

You can also use the certified questions available in the Question Bank, which is a great option in case you need to insert just a few demographic questions in a broader survey—a pretty common practice.

The following are some examples of good demographic survey questions:

Age

Which category below includes your age?

Ethnicity

Are you White, Black or African-American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or some other race?

Pro tip: For demographic questions like the last one, it’s a good idea to add an “Other (please specify)” answer option. This type of answer option gives respondents a text box to self-identify.

Gender

Note that the last question requires a text box for the respondent to self-identify.

Marital status

Are you now married, widowed, divorced, separated, or never married?

Education

What is the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received?

Employment

Which of the following categories best describes your employment status?

Household income

How much total combined money did all members of your household earn in 2010?

Location

Are your living quarters owned or being bought by you or someone in your household, rented for cash, or occupied without payment of cash rent?

Language

What language do you mainly speak at home?

Family and dependents

How many children are you parent or guardian for that live in your household (aged 17 or younger only)?

Political preferences 

Where do you currently get your news about state politics?

Religion

Do you identify with any of the following religions? (Select all that apply.)

Looking for an audience to send surveys to? Our SurveyMonkey Audience product includes these attributes and more, so you can send your survey to the right people.

Asking for age ranges in surveys

One of the most commonly asked demographic questions is about age range. Age is sometimes a necessary piece of information in market research segmentation, medical research, customer identification, and more.

Why ask for age range?

Depending upon your research, age range may be vital in understanding your data and being able to use it. For example, if you’re studying consumer preferences and behaviors in regard to music streaming services, survey respondents in their teens and 20s will likely answer your survey questions differently than older respondents.

Determining your respondents’ age ranges will expand your understanding of your target audience and allow you to analyze similarities and differences between the different age ranges.

Tips for asking about age range

Because age can be a sensitive issue, follow these tips for asking your survey respondents age-related questions:

How to classify age range

Trying to figure out how to determine age ranges for survey questions? There are many ways to list age group ranges for surveys. Some researchers prefer to create sets of five or ten-year intervals, while others ask by generation (Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, Gen Z, etc.). You can also use ranges based on general life stages (18-25, 25-35, etc.).

The range you use is up to you and what will work best with your survey goals.

Best practices for utilizing demographic survey questions 

You’re almost ready to create your own demographic questionnaire… but first, how about reviewing some tips to make sure that you implement the best practices in survey methodology?

How to easily create demographic surveys

Online surveys are a great way to reach a broad audience. You can post demographic questionnaires to your website, send them through email, or ask for responses through Facebook and other social media channels.

If you need help reaching the right target audience, you can rely on a service that will get you enough respondents to conduct a successful survey with the right demographic mix. SurveyMonkey Audience not only makes it easy to find people who will take your survey, it also eliminates the need for them to even answer demographic questions.

How? Well, you can send your questionnaire to a selected group of respondents based on the demographic targets you want to reach. SurveyMonkey Audience knows who is taking the survey and therefore it can automatically pipe in five types of demographic information (gender, age, household income, device used to take the survey, and location) directly into your results. This saves the respondent time and ensures you’re reaching the right people.

Using the Filter and Compare tools in SurveyMonkey Analyze, you can easily compare and contrast how different demographic groups answer your questions. This makes demographic segmentation and data analysis with SurveyMonkey Audience even easier.

Demographic survey templates

Now that you’ve seen what sample demographic questions actually look like, you can check out some ready-to-use demographic survey templates.

The following are templates, that include demographic survey questions, straight from the minds of SurveyMonkey’s expert survey methodologists:

* Please note that some demographics templates are available in English only at this time.

In addition to the six questions posed in the Snapshot Template, this 12-question template asks about geographic location, housing, marital status, ethnicity, business or farm ownership, and personal income. View U.S. demographics, full template.

With two quick questions, learn about respondents’ employment status and the type of work they do. View employment template.

Discover the makeup of your school community with 16 basic demographic questions about gender, income, race, relationship to student, and more. View education demographics template.

Learn more about the companies on your customer list with this 10-question survey that asks when the company was founded, where it’s headquartered, number of employees and locations, and more. View firmographics template.

Ready to use demographic questions in your surveys?

With this comprehensive guide to asking demographic questions on surveys, you’re ready to ask your target audience for all the information that you may need for your next project. Start your own survey now→. To create multiple surveys and gain access to various SurveyMonkey tools, choose the plan that’s right for you.

See how SurveyMonkey can power your curiosity

Which of the following are demographic data that researchers consider?

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