20 Top Tips to Writing Effective Surveys
Writing surveys is easy; isn’t it? The truth is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is more difficult. The following twenty tips will help you with your survey questionnaire design.
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 a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.
2. Give the survey a good title
The survey title represents an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so make them feel that their investment is worthwhile.
3. Keep the survey as short as possible
Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize asking questions that will provide you with ‘nice to know’ information and concentrate instead on ‘need to know’ questions.
4. Use plain English, avoid terminology and acronyms, be consistent and ensure that the questions you ask will not result in ambiguous answers
Be careful when wording the 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 long questions
Where practical use succinct sentences. Long questions can cause a respondent to lose concentration and lead to them abandoning the survey.
6. Ask one question at a time
Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like athletics and football?’
7. Don’t influence the answer
Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell alcohol to minors be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no 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”, “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.
9. While you are compiling the survey consider, when the survey is complete, how the compiled data is going be analysed
When asking questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, appreciate that such information is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider grouping the answers into groups that will match your analysis requirements. For example “How long have you worked here?” – ‘less than 2 year’, ‘between 2 and 4 years’ and ‘more than 4′.
10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows
When asking questions 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 control who responds to your survey consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t match your target profile.
12. Provide a channel for your respondents to expand on their answers or make comments
By allowing respondents to make additional comments you will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember that for large sample collections it may be difficult to analyze free text open ended responses.
13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured
If you have guaranteed 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 contact information destroyed once the survey has finished.
14. Weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable
If your respondents are to be anonymous then appreciate that you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. Allowing respondents to remain anonymous will however allow respondents to respond without possible peer pressure.
15. Carefully consider the best response format
Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analysing the data radio buttons are easier to analyse than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. If a radio response can be used do not use a check box.
16. Inform the respondent as to how much time the survey will take to complete
Respondent drop out can increase if the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can determine 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. Test the survey
Before publishing a live survey publish the survey as a trial to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.
19. Before publishing the survey check the survey carefully
Carefully check and then check again that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible ask a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.
20. Say ‘Thank You’
To complete surveys respondents need to invest their time and should be thanked either in a covering letter, at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider an incentive such as a reward of some sort.
To get started there are numerous survey software websites to choose from.
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