Tips to Writing Effective Surveys

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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

How to create a survey using Survey Galaxy

Designing surveys is considered easy; but is it? The reality is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is more difficult. The following tips will help you with your survey questionnaire design so you can write more effective surveys.

1. What is the survey’s purpose?

There are many reasons for conducting questionnaires. By correctly phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in many ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The title of the survey is an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents are going to invest time in completing the survey so make them feel that their investment is worthwhile.

3. Avoid making the survey any longer than it needs to be

Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize the questions providing you with ‘nice to know’ information and focus instead on the ‘need to know’ questions.

4. Use plain English, maintain consistency and avoid terminology, acronyms and asking questions that could result in ambiguous answers

Care must be taken in wording a question. Ambiguous questions run the risk that any analysis of the resulting survey data will be meaningless or at the very least misleading.

5. Avoid having long questions

Where practical use succinct sentences. Long questions can lead to a higher level of incidents where respondents abandon a survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like tennis and golf?’

7. Don’t influence the answer

It is important to avoid loading the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell alcohol to children be prosecuted?’ is unlikely to have any value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Allow the respondent to answer how they really feel or they may be inclined to abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “No comment”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.

9. While compiling your survey consider how you will want to analyse the results once the survey has been published

Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how answers can be grouped. For example “How long have you worked here?” - ‘less than 3 year’, ‘between 3 and 8 years’ and ‘more than 8′.

10. Try and ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.

11. Target your respondents carefully

Sometimes you will want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents that don’t match your target profile.

12. Allow the respondent to expand or make comments

Allowing the respondent to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember though for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If the survey you are conducting is to be confidential ensure that you honour your pledge

If you have assured the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and the information is not going to be used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed after the survey is complete.

14. Consider the benefits and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. However in some cases allowing people to remain anonymous will allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Consideration carefully the best response format

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When creating your survey keep in mind that when analyzing the data radio buttons are easier to analyze than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. Do not use a check box format if a radio response format would do.

16. Inform the respondent as to the approximate time it will take to complete the survey

If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop out can become a problem. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Advise the respondents of the survey end date

Encourage your invited respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise the respondents of the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Trial the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to confirm that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey several times

Check more than once that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If practical get a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.

20. Thank the respondents

To complete surveys respondents have to devote their time and should be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as entry into a prize draw or a reward.

To get started there are numerous survey software websites to choose from.

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