While questions can go in any order you'd like, you'll do your respondents a favor by grouping similar questions together. If you have a bunch of questions that use a scale or are all on the same topic, it's better to combine those questions into one section of the survey, rather than spreading them out. This helps your respondents answer more efficiently, since all of the items are related and relevant to each other. Grouping like questions helps improve the flow of the survey, and can help an otherwise disjointed set of topics come together. Question repetition with variation can also be used to ensure that the responses you collect are accurate. But be careful, because the way you order your questions can introduce question-order bias. 

 

Grouping similar questions can make them easier to answer, but it can also cause respondents to read the questions in a given section less carefully because they feel confident they already know what the questions are about. This is when repeating variations of the same question, sprinkled throughout your survey, can prove handy. 

 

For example, if you ask for an opinion on a type of food or music at the start of the survey, and you ask a similar question at the end of it, any given respondent should answer them the same way. This would tell you that the participant is carefully going through each question. If, however, the answers are different, the respondent might be suffering from fatigue and/or may not really be paying attention. Attention checks like repeating questions with slight variations can really help you gauge the reliability of the responses you're getting.

Watch this space for more tips.