8 Tips for Perfect Presentation Game Questions
Games for presentations are the way to win over your audience. If so, however, the questions you present must be well drafted. An online poll or quiz game may sound simple; after all, you just ask a question. Yet you can easily shoot yourself in the foot with poorly formulated presentation game questions. Sendsteps has a lot of experience setting up interactive games for group presentations and creating engaging questions. That's why in this blog we share our best tips for presentation game questions. Before writing, take some time. That way you'll be on the right track to get useful answers and hold the audience's attention.
Tip 1: Ask closed-ended questions
First, decide what type of question you want to ask. For a presentation, we recommend asking closed or multiple choice questions as much as possible. Think simple "yes and no" questions or multiple choice questions. Open-ended questions are more difficult to answer. Chances are the audience will drop out sooner. Do it anyway? Then ask them at the end, for example to get feedback
Tip 2: Create simple questions
Questions should be understandable to everyone. Therefore, ask them in spoken language and avoid double negations. The question "Don't you go to a mall because you don't want too many people around you?" is difficult for many people to understand.
Tip 3: Keep the questions neutral
By incorporating an opinion into a question, a participant is influenced in his or her response. The question "Many people separate their plastic garbage. How likely are you to separate plastic garbage?" can be made more objective by removing the first sentence.
Tip 4: Ask one question at a time
Asking two questions in one confuses participants. As a result, they will give an answer that does not reflect their true opinion. You solve this by simply asking two separate closed questions.
Tip 5: Avoid identical questions
Irritation among participants is the last thing you want to achieve. Therefore, make sure questions are not similar. All questions in the presentation game starting with "What do you think of ..." is not a smart idea. This causes answers to become stale and lose focus. Let creativity run wild and vary the type of questions with one another.
Tip 6: Don't use difficult words or technical terms
Tricky words in questions cause participants to misinterpret the question. For example, do you want to gain insight into participants' level of job satisfaction? Then ask to what extent people gain job satisfaction.
Tip 7: Be clear
Asking unclear questions is likely to cause participants to misunderstand the question and logically fail to give the correct answer. Suppose you ask, "How many times a month do you go out on the town?" People may interpret this as eating out, shopping or partying. So be clear in your question format.
Tip 8: Challenge!
Keep participants on their toes by putting them on the spot. For example, confront the audience with a devilish dilemma and play the "Two Choices Game". During a presentation on sustainability, you can ask the following question: "What do you prefer, never being able to buy new clothes or never being able to drive a car again? The results can be surprising!
The perfect presentation game question
Now that we know what interactive presentation game questions should meet, it's time to apply what we've learned in practice. In a presentation about mindfull work, the following questions might come in handy: "In an average week, how often do you feel stressed at work?" on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 7 (all week). The follow-up question reads, "What physical symptoms do you experience because of this?" with the following response options: joint pain, back pain, headache, exhaustion, stomach ache and weight loss. Both questions are closed but differ by the response options. The first question contains a clear time period. The concept of physical complaints is clarified by clear answers. Also, the questions are simple, neutral and identical. In short, there can be practically no confusion with these questions.
Need help with presentation game questions?
Based on the theory and examples, you can get started yourself as a quizmaster. The free version of Sendsteps allows you to ask unlimited questions to your audience. Do you still find it difficult to ask the right questions? Sendsteps will gladly help you with that. In that case, please contact us. What can we help you with?
Robert Daverschot
Robert is a professional moderator, presenter and speaker coach. Robert has years of experience at home and abroad and works for a broad range of industries. He has interviewed ministers, captains of industry and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In his dealings with the audience, he always uses Sendsteps. With it, an audience is able to voice their opinions, whereby attendees can cast votes or send in comments to speakers and panels on stage. As such, events turn into lively dialogues with everyone being able to speak up!