Health Questionnaire

Health questionnaires are an important way of gathering first hand medical information from the respondents. They are generally used by insurance companies, employment agencies, hospitals etc. While designing health questionnaires it is important at the outset, to clearly state that the information made available to you would not be disclosed to a third party. This is important as the respondents are then rest assured and would be more forthright in their answers.

The questionnaire must first begin with questions related to identification, e.g. name, gender, date of birth, address, etc. These act as warm-up questions and you can then move on to more specific medical-history questions. Generally health questionnaires have questions with dichotomous choices, with yes/no answers. Wherever the respondent marks ‘yes’, space must be provided for further explanation.

Depending on the type of health questionnaire you are designing, questions related to work and home environment can also be included to gauge their influence on the person’s health. One can also have a set of miscellaneous questions pertaining to health, which can include personal habits like smoking, drinking, substance abuse, etc.

It is ideal to cater for some space for any other additional information the respondent would like to provide which may be of importance in the context.