Are Your Matrix Questions Too Tall?

I love Grid/matrix questions! They are such a great time-saver when compared to asking respondents to rate each item as a separate question on a separate page. But do your respondents know what answers they are giving? Maybe... Maybe not!

Let's look at a lengthy grid:

Doesn't look too bad, eh? The problem lies in grids that get really long, like the one above. A respondent stopping by, who is answering your questions from a computer with a windowed browser (common among Mac users) or a low-resolution display setting might see this when they scroll down to answer the questions that appear lower on the grid:



Clearly the problem here is that the respondents can't see the column headers, therefore are marking radio buttons without knowing what answers they are giving.

One possible solution is to repeat your column headers at the bottom of the matrix, like so:



Better yet, why not toss one in the middle too?:



Repeat the scale throughout the grid as many times as you need to in order to ensure that respondents can see what answers they are giving.