--- title: Behavioral Questionnaire Design and Process description: The YourStake behavioral questionnaire aims to present an engaging and structured process for advisors to be able to consistently learn client values in ways that lead to successful investing outcomes.  --- [Skip to content](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge/behavioral-questionnaire-design-and-process#main-content) English Show submenu for translations [More support](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge/kb-tickets/new?hsLang=en) ![YourStake Logo White](https://help.yourstake.org/hs-fs/hubfs/YourStake%20Logo%20White.png?width=200&height=51&name=YourStake%20Logo%20White.png) Open main navigation Close main navigation - English Show submenu for translations - [More support](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge/kb-tickets/new) - [Back to Platform](https://www.yourstake.org/ui/advisor/home) [Back to Platform](https://www.yourstake.org/ui/advisor/home?hsLang=en) Welcome to the Help Center. How can we help you? - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. 1. [Help Center](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge?hsLang=en) 2. [Values Core](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge/values-core?hsLang=en) 3. [Values Questionnaire](https://help.yourstake.org/knowledge/values-core?hsLang=en#values-questionnaire) # Behavioral Questionnaire Design and Process ## The YourStake behavioral questionnaire aims to present an engaging and structured process for advisors to be able to consistently learn client values in ways that lead to successful investing outcomes. #### Design Process The YourStake behavioral questionnaire aims to present an engaging and structured process for advisors to be able to consistently learn client values in ways that lead to successful investing outcomes.  #### The YourStake.org questionnaire was designed through working with a focus group of advisors using the questionnaire with their clients over ~9 months. The questionnaire is designed using techniques from psychometric survey design. The focus group and design process was guided by persons who studied psychology, behavioral economics, and econometrics at Yale University, and worked on survey design with the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications. The wording of the questionnaire was created in collaboration with BEWorks, a group of global behavioral finance experts. #### Key Considerations and Outcomes: **Quick** Financial advisors have many topics to go through in their consultations, and this cannot take up the whole meeting by default. We designed the questionnaire to allow clients to answer all the questions in 3 minutes or less.   **Engaging** We designed the questionnaire to be a fun experience for clients. All questions have the potential to spark additional conversation between the advisor and client. While the questionnaire can be completed quickly, approximately 30% of clients spend at least 10 minutes discussing values-based issues when going through the questionnaire with their advisor, with many conversations spanning 30+ minutes.   **Digestible** Clients need to be able to take this questionnaire without feeling overwhelmed by choice or like they need extra expertise to understand the topics.    **Relatable** Wherever possible, we want to frame questions in terms of daily life activities or tangible tradeoffs that people may have already considered.    **Avoid Offense** Advisors fear offending a client by bringing up a hot-button issue or biased opinion when having values-based conversations. We aim to phrase questions without triggering keywords, and steer away from references to polarizing buckets of identities.    **Resonance** A questionnaire outcome is successful if the client feels the results adequately represent their values. Other questionnaires, such as the Myers-Briggs, have the quality of people resonating with the identity described by their results.     **Revealed Preferences** Questions should probe client behaviors. Questions should be anchored in daily life activities and reflective of deeply held beliefs, not what people think is politically correct to say at a meeting.    #### Structure There are 14 questions and 7 “ESG Personality Types” that can result.    The questionnaire is setup as a Likert questionnaire, with question responses ranging from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree.’    There are two questions each that correspond to an “ESG Personality Type.” For someone to be associated with the personality type, they have to answer net towards that type. Those two questions have randomly varied directions (e.g. sometimes to be associated with the personality type respondents should “agree” and sometimes they should “disagree.”) This approach aims to address internal **consistency** of survey design.   The wording of the questions aims to most closely reflect daily life practices (e.g. “do you own a gun?”). If not a daily behavior, the questions pose tradeoffs that prompt respondents to choose between priorities (e.g. “should employers pay a living wage even if that means employing fewer people?”).  YourStake chose to represent personality types with seven categories because it is the [ideal number of categories](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/) that humans can hold distinctly in their short term memory. 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