We’ll say it up front: Fun survey questions are not for everyone or every circumstance.

However, fun questions can be exceptionally useful for uncovering people’s feelings indirectly when the results are analyzed by experienced researchers. For example, consider questions like “If you were to break a world record, what would it be for?” or “Imagine the zombie apocalypse is happening right now. What’s your survival plan?” Probes like this give researchers a deep insight into the respondents’ resourcefulness, creativity, and natural tendencies.

In addition, the “fun survey” category is popular with employees and consumers alike. Why? People get a kick out of answering off-beat questions (it’s engaging). On the surface, random survey questions for fun don’t carry ominous undertones of probing for human weaknesses (particularly in employee work situations).

Another thing: Fun questions don’t connect directly or traditionally to a marketplace or business agenda, brand, team cooperation, a boss’s attitude, customer service, reactions to promotions, product changes, etc. As a rule, they’re quirky, indirect, and, while inside the theme, unrelated to standard research techniques, thus encouraging respondents to be truthful. You’ll find that casual, entertaining quizzes (versus serious probing questions around a transparent subject) more effectively remove bias from the answers they generate.

In short, creating interesting survey questions is a unique skill that enables you to develop penetrating research projects that everyone enjoys. Read on to learn more about this fascinating subject.

Why are amusing survey questions important?

There are a few crucial points to remember:

1. Research focused on fun survey questions is a viable pathway to understanding people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior patterns. However, it requires a sound sense of balance—combining funny survey questions with serious ones, sometimes as icebreakers to warm the respondents to the exercise.
2. You want your audience to complete the survey, not drop it midway. One of the best ways to ensure this is by sprinkling fun questions.
3. Funny surveys put participants at ease, removing “suspicion” of a hidden agenda behind the questions, thus encouraging truthfulness and frank sharing of opinions.
4. The idea is not to be funny for “funny’s” sake. As intimated above, responses to fun survey questions, especially with the support of psychology training, allow us to pick up on inner personality drivers guiding respondents’ behavior.
5. Finally, although “fun” headlines this survey category, it’s slightly misleading. Why? “Interesting” is more to the point versus trying to make the audience laugh. These categories work amazingly well when connected to a pastime, hobby, love for travel, music, food tastes, figuring out puzzles, or imagination games that intrigue us.

Fun question categories

ICE-BREAKERS: An ice-breaker is a fun conversation-starter to warm up your audience and get the thoughts flowing. For example: Start every question with “Describe XXX in one word,” where XXX is:

• The person to the left or right of you
• Your last fine-dining experience
• Your personality
• The love of your life
• Your mother
• Your father
• Your BFF
• Yourself

OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY: Funny survey questions encourage the respondent to open up and provide insight into the inner self. All the questions below end with “… and why?”

• When you sing in the shower or hum to yourself, what songs or music relaxes you the most?
• What events are you most looking forward to this week?
• Who do you miss the most in your life?
• What animal would be the most fun to turn into for a day?

MULTIPLE CHOICE: Because this question type provides potential answers rather than asking participants to start from a blank slate, this is a fantastic entry point for fun-type probes. Responses to the random survey questions for fun provide both entertainment value for participants and vivid clues to personality types and behavioral inclinations. For example:

If you could pick a fictional character as your go-to pal for company and adventure, who would it be?

• Batman: I’d love to get into crime-fighting activities
• The Road Runner: I love the idea of outpacing Wile E. Coyote
• Bugs Bunny: Always up for fun and adventure as he dodges Elmer Fudd
• Cinderella: Overcoming adversity with the help of magic is intriguing
• Iron Man: The coolest customer under the sun and tech-savvy

If you could swap lives with a famous personality, who would that be?

• Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger: A super-achiever on-screen and in life
• Clint Eastwood: Time for some action-packed adventures
• Oprah: An iconic figure who touches so many lives
• Elon Musk: Tesla, space travel, X/Twitter, solar energy, and more

Which of these weird food combinations would you be willing to try?

• Escargot (snails) on matzoh, washed down with green tea
• Mopani worms (an African delicacy) on toast and butter
• Peanut butter sandwiches topped with green relish and a touch of mustard
• Prawns and ice cream (any flavor)
• Haggis (Scottish blood pudding) and dark ale

Which animal skills do you admire the most?

• Birds – Flying is the epitome of freedom
• Dogs – Trust, loyalty, and lifetime companionship without judgment
• Cats – Agile, thoughtful, and independent
• Rats – Resourceful, inventive, and street-smart
• Elephants – steady, consistent, and family-minded

If you could be a historical figure, who would that be?

• Mahatma Gandhi – An iconic peacemaker who thought outside of the box
• Nelson Mandela – An unsurpassed symbol of forgiveness and endurance
• Genghis Khan – Ruler and relentless adventurer
• King Solomon – Wisdom and fairness personified
• Albert Einstein – A once-in-a-century brainiac who changed the world

Where would it be if you could travel the world to the one place that’s a must-see?

• The Serengeti game reserves – Nature at its best
• The top of Mount Everest – An adventure to the top of the world
• A swim or sail across Challenger Deep – The deepest known part of the earth’s seabed
• The Great Wall of China – An architectural wonder of the world
• Alaskan icebergs – Before they all disappear from global warming

Who would you choose if you were an elite athlete for a day?

• Usain Bolt – The fastest man to cover 100 meters and 200 meters
• Tom Brady – The “greatest of all time” football quarterback
• Eliud Kipchoge – The most consistent marathoner in the record books
• Mohammed Ali – A legendary world heavyweight boxing champion
• Tiger Woods – The most phenomenal golfer the world has ever seen
• Rafael Nadal – The world’s most physical tennis player and winner of 22 major titles

Staying on track with your goals

Aside from icebreakers where almost anything goes, a fun survey’s goal is not to disrupt the survey theme or look out of place in any way. Although these questions may look weird, they should still be compatible with the survey objectives. The tricky part is finding that delicate balance so respondents don’t feel like these questions are somehow probing for more than they appear to ask on the surface.

For example, fun employee survey questions related to an engagement research exercise must stay within the bounds of discovering how employees or coworkers feel about their workplace, what makes them happier, what improves productivity, and so on. So, include some of the following questions:

• How do you like to start your day?
• What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you at work?
• Who inspires you the most?
• If you could have any job in the company, what would that be?
• What’s the best piece of advice you picked up at work?
• What’s the tiniest frustration at work that won’t disappear?

The same principles apply to customer surveys. Here are some examples:

• What’s the funniest experience you’ve encountered with our brand?
• If you had a genie wish to change one thing about our brand, what would it be?
• If you had a genie wish to ensure one thing about our brand never changes, what would that be?
• Of all our brand’s communications, which one irritates you the most?
• Of all our brand’s communications, which one rings most true?

One more example for marketers: If our brand were an animal, what would it be?

• A cat – Lithe, athletic, and independent
• A labradoodle – Fuzzy, cuddly, and a constant companion
• An elephant – Larger than life
• A goldfish – Unemotional and distant
• An eagle – A soaring majestic bird above the noise of life

Conclusion

Funny or random survey questions for fun sound like a carnival survey for respondents’ entertainment. Nothing could be further from the truth. In other words, research is a serious business, and fun survey questions are crucial in keeping it that way. Throwing in light-heartedness relaxes respondents and creates truthfulness around the study’s objectives more effectively than a survey format without a bit of frivolity included.

So, in that light, researchers must not allow the fun to override or derail the more direct questions appearing in between. Sogolytics is a cutting-edge resource in the survey arena, with extensive experience in injecting balance into the process. (Need a more serious head start? Our survey templates can save you time, too!)