Avoiding the Assumptions Baked Into a Question
Launch library · evergreen read
Every question carries hidden assumptions about the situation it describes, and a question built on a faulty assumption can produce a confusing or misleading answer even when the person answering is being entirely honest.
Asking how often do you exercise, for instance, already assumes the person exercises at all, quietly making it harder for someone who does not to answer honestly without feeling implicitly judged by the question's own framing.
Careful question writers learn to check their own assumptions before finalising a question, testing whether the wording still makes sense for someone whose situation differs entirely from the one the question seems to expect.
A useful exercise is deliberately imagining several very different respondents before finalising a question, checking whether the wording still makes sense for each of them, rather than testing it only against the single respondent the question writer happened to picture first. This small habit of imagining several different respondents costs little time, yet it consistently catches assumptions the original writer never noticed making.