Before you begin to compose your survey questions, you must take the time to really understand the purpose of your survey and you need to keep this purpose in mind every step of the way.
A good survey provides you actionable, clear information for your business decisions. Good surveys have higher response rates, higher quality data, are easy to fill out and aren't confusing.
By following these steps you are well onto your ways of creating more effective surveys.
1. Clearly define the purpose of the survey
Think about how you will use the data that you collect. Mentally walk through the steps you will take once the data have been collected. What do you expect to learn? How do you plan to apply what you learn? What will the output report look like? What charts and graphs will be prepared? What information do you need to be assured that action is warranted? What are your goals and how will the survey help you reach those goals?
By working backwards from the outcome you are aiming for, you can identify the kinds of questions that you need to ask in your survey. Advance planning helps ensure that the survey asks the right questions to meet the objective and generate useful data.
2. Keep the survey short, precise, clear and concise
Short and focused helps with both quality and quantity of response. It is generally better to focus on a single objective than try to create a master survey that covers multiple objectives. Shorter surveys generally have higher response rates and lower abandonment among survey respondents. Make sure each of your questions is focused on helping to meet your stated objective. Don't toss in 'nice to have' questions that don't directly provide data to help you meet your objectives.
You should aim to keep questions, and answers, to the point ?and spell check these as well to avoid appearing unprofessional.
3. Keep your survey smart and tidy
Simple techniques such a page breaks, branching and skip logic add certain finesse to your surveys.
Keeping your audience engaged is avoiding a massive scrolling survey. Try to keep page breaks at logical intervals, so that like questions are grouped together. And refrain from just having one question per page.
By making your survey smarter you can avoid using text like, "If you answered No to Q1 then Answer Q3" - this causes respondent frustration and increases the "drop out" rate. Design your survey using branching logic so that the correct questions are automatically routed based on previous responses.
4. Screen the your audience (if need be)
Consider if it is worth screening the respondents at the beginning of your survey (utilising the like of demographic questions). For example, if you're interested in learning what your shoppers think of a new shipping service, you don't really need 50 responses from customers who only pick items up at the store themselves.
5. Keep the questions simple, specific and effective as possible
Once you've set a course for your survey, you'll need to choose your questions carefully to get the right responses. Choosing the wrong format for your questions can lead to inaccurate information, making your survey results less helpful than they could be. Determine the type of question that is best suited to answer the question and provide enough robustness to meet analysis requirements. This means do you use open-ended text questions, dichotomous, multiple choice, rank order, scaled, rating, or constant sum (ratio scale) questions as their need is realised.
Ask questions that give your audience scope to respond adequately, but don't leave so much leeway that it's confusing. If it's a yes/no question, only give yes and no as answers ?on the other hand, where there's room for maybe, be sure you include it.
6. Make sure your survey flows in a logical order
It is always prudent to add an "Introductory" text to explain the project and what is required of the respondent, while it is seen as professional to have an ending "Thank You" text as well as information about where to find the results of the survey when they are published. In between, it is a good idea to start from broader�based questions and then move to those narrower in scope.
It is usually better to collect demographic data and ask any sensitive questions at the end (unless you are using this information to screen out survey participants). If you are asking for contact information, place that information at the end.
7. Keep your audience engaged
Whether you're assessing your customer base for a new product or service rollout or trying to get a gauge of customer satisfaction, it's important that you keep your audience engaged in the survey process. This is best done by asking a variety of distinct questions and using a number of different, and appropriate (see above), question types.
If people think you're just reusing the same question over and over, they'll click away or just randomly respond to get done with the process rather than provide the attention you need.
8. Pre�test your survey (or survey questions)
Make sure you pre�test your survey with a few members of your target audience and/or co�workers to find glitches and unexpected question interpretations. More importantly, it will ensure someone else has read through it and that the questions make sense to a third party. Obtain their feedback... in detail. What were they unsure about? Did they have questions? Did they have trouble understanding what you wanted? Did they take a point of view not covered in your answers or question?
9.Consider your audience when sending survey invitations
For instance, for employee surveys, you should send during the business week and at a time that is suitable for your business. i.e. if you are a sales driven business avoid sending to employees at month end when they are trying to close business.
10. Estimate the time required to complete the survey
As a courtesy, tell your survey participants how long the survey will take to complete. A good rule of thumb is that a survey should take less than five minutes. Obviously, you don't know how fast or slow people read and tick boxes, so you can only guess based on how long it takes you.
By providing a rough estimate of the time, a number of questions, and even progress meter along the way can go far in terms of keeping customers engaged in the survey process. An engaged respondent is far more likely to provide good data.
A good survey provides you actionable, clear information for your business decisions. Good surveys have higher response rates, higher quality data, are easy to fill out and aren't confusing.
By following these steps you are well onto your ways of creating more effective surveys.
1. Clearly define the purpose of the survey
Think about how you will use the data that you collect. Mentally walk through the steps you will take once the data have been collected. What do you expect to learn? How do you plan to apply what you learn? What will the output report look like? What charts and graphs will be prepared? What information do you need to be assured that action is warranted? What are your goals and how will the survey help you reach those goals?
By working backwards from the outcome you are aiming for, you can identify the kinds of questions that you need to ask in your survey. Advance planning helps ensure that the survey asks the right questions to meet the objective and generate useful data.
2. Keep the survey short, precise, clear and concise
Short and focused helps with both quality and quantity of response. It is generally better to focus on a single objective than try to create a master survey that covers multiple objectives. Shorter surveys generally have higher response rates and lower abandonment among survey respondents. Make sure each of your questions is focused on helping to meet your stated objective. Don't toss in 'nice to have' questions that don't directly provide data to help you meet your objectives.
You should aim to keep questions, and answers, to the point ?and spell check these as well to avoid appearing unprofessional.
3. Keep your survey smart and tidy
Simple techniques such a page breaks, branching and skip logic add certain finesse to your surveys.
Keeping your audience engaged is avoiding a massive scrolling survey. Try to keep page breaks at logical intervals, so that like questions are grouped together. And refrain from just having one question per page.
By making your survey smarter you can avoid using text like, "If you answered No to Q1 then Answer Q3" - this causes respondent frustration and increases the "drop out" rate. Design your survey using branching logic so that the correct questions are automatically routed based on previous responses.
4. Screen the your audience (if need be)
Consider if it is worth screening the respondents at the beginning of your survey (utilising the like of demographic questions). For example, if you're interested in learning what your shoppers think of a new shipping service, you don't really need 50 responses from customers who only pick items up at the store themselves.
5. Keep the questions simple, specific and effective as possible
Once you've set a course for your survey, you'll need to choose your questions carefully to get the right responses. Choosing the wrong format for your questions can lead to inaccurate information, making your survey results less helpful than they could be. Determine the type of question that is best suited to answer the question and provide enough robustness to meet analysis requirements. This means do you use open-ended text questions, dichotomous, multiple choice, rank order, scaled, rating, or constant sum (ratio scale) questions as their need is realised.
Ask questions that give your audience scope to respond adequately, but don't leave so much leeway that it's confusing. If it's a yes/no question, only give yes and no as answers ?on the other hand, where there's room for maybe, be sure you include it.
6. Make sure your survey flows in a logical order
It is always prudent to add an "Introductory" text to explain the project and what is required of the respondent, while it is seen as professional to have an ending "Thank You" text as well as information about where to find the results of the survey when they are published. In between, it is a good idea to start from broader�based questions and then move to those narrower in scope.
It is usually better to collect demographic data and ask any sensitive questions at the end (unless you are using this information to screen out survey participants). If you are asking for contact information, place that information at the end.
7. Keep your audience engaged
Whether you're assessing your customer base for a new product or service rollout or trying to get a gauge of customer satisfaction, it's important that you keep your audience engaged in the survey process. This is best done by asking a variety of distinct questions and using a number of different, and appropriate (see above), question types.
If people think you're just reusing the same question over and over, they'll click away or just randomly respond to get done with the process rather than provide the attention you need.
8. Pre�test your survey (or survey questions)
Make sure you pre�test your survey with a few members of your target audience and/or co�workers to find glitches and unexpected question interpretations. More importantly, it will ensure someone else has read through it and that the questions make sense to a third party. Obtain their feedback... in detail. What were they unsure about? Did they have questions? Did they have trouble understanding what you wanted? Did they take a point of view not covered in your answers or question?
9.Consider your audience when sending survey invitations
For instance, for employee surveys, you should send during the business week and at a time that is suitable for your business. i.e. if you are a sales driven business avoid sending to employees at month end when they are trying to close business.
10. Estimate the time required to complete the survey
As a courtesy, tell your survey participants how long the survey will take to complete. A good rule of thumb is that a survey should take less than five minutes. Obviously, you don't know how fast or slow people read and tick boxes, so you can only guess based on how long it takes you.
By providing a rough estimate of the time, a number of questions, and even progress meter along the way can go far in terms of keeping customers engaged in the survey process. An engaged respondent is far more likely to provide good data.
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