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Survey Guidelines

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LEGER
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Consumer Opinion Services
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Table of Contents

Today, one of the most effective methods of conducting research has been found to be surveys. Surveys have a big impact whether the quality is positive or negative for your company’s direction, especially if you get the results in front of the right people. They assist you in gathering useful data from a big group of people, allowing you to reach a valid and objective conclusion. However, this has to be done correctly in order to be useful.

In this article we will dig deep into to this topic and show you how to get the most out of it.

01

What is Survey?

Survey research is merely a systematic survey carried out. A survey is defined as an act in which a selected sample of individuals is examined or questioned to obtain information about a service, a product or a process. Surveys are an important tool to collect and analyze data which collects information from a targeted group of people concerning their opinions, behavior or knowledge. This data helps to identify needs or to evaluate their satisfaction with key stakeholders, particularly customers and employees.

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02

Key factors to consider that influence the design of your survey.

Participants may lose focus and not finish the forms’ weak points if questions appear random, unclear or out of place. Since the duration of a survey is one of the most influential elements in its completion rate–paying attention to the facts will help you create a concise survey. Remove queries that are irrelevant or this may cause participants to become distracted. These are the key factor to consider that influence the design of your survey. 

Following these questions will help you to make the survey clear, concise and communication-oriented. They are as follows:

  • Is it simple to understand your survey questions? 
  • Does each one generate a distinct response? 
  • Will your audience understand the purpose of each? 
  • What is the duration of your survey? 
  • Is this the optimum length for a survey? Is there a limit of 30 questions? 
  • Are your queries brief and asked only once, rather than being rephrased or repeated in several ways?
  • Will the questions assist you in achieving your main objective? 
  • Is each one significant in terms of generating useful information?
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03

Why Conduct Survey Research?

Survey research is a first-hand way to gather information from defined research participants. One of the strongest arguments in survey research is that it helps you in systematic research to collect the most realistic data sets. Surveys combine a smooth fusion of closed and open-ended questions with other survey response-scale questions to facilitate the collection of numerous information from respondents. 

Survey research is useful in many primary scenarios. For example, a restaurant wants to collect customers’ feedback on its new signature drink. An excellent way to do this is to conduct a survey considering a defined target audience. By this, the restaurant will be able to collect more primary data from respondents on what they think and feel about the new drink on numerous levels. As a result, they’d have more reliable and objective data to work with.

Aside from what we’ve already explored, there are a few more reasons why you should opt for survey research:

  • Cost

Surveys are a comparatively low-cost option. The cost per respondent for online and mobile surveys, in particular, is quite low. Even if respondents are offered incentives, the cost per response is typically far lower than the cost of administering a paper or phone survey. As a result, the number of potential responses increases.

  • Expansive

Surveys can help describe the features of a large group of people. It enables you to collect vital information that may be used to improve your product, particularly in market research. No other research approach can offer such a broad range of capabilities, ensuring a more accurate sample from which to draw conclusions and make strategic choices.

  • Dependable

Because surveys are anonymous, respondents are able to provide more frank and accurate responses. Respondents must be as open and honest as possible with their responses in order to obtain the most accurate information about the actions and preferences of respondents. Hence, anonymous surveys result in more honest and unambiguous responses than other forms of research methodology, especially if it is mentioned clearly that survey replies would be kept entirely confidential.

  • Flexible

Survey research is designed in interactive methods, making it easier for respondents to share their opinions and experiences. Online polls, email surveys, social networking surveys, feedback forms, mobile surveys, online questionnaires, and face-to-face interview surveys are all examples of survey delivery methods. Using a mixed mode of survey may be flexible or difficult to reach respondents. For example, an administrator can use both online surveys and paper surveys to collect responses and compile survey results into one data set.

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04

Methods/ Modes to conduct a Survey research

Survey research can be conducted in a variety of ways, both online and offline. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Online Surveys

  • An online survey is a type of data collection tool that can be used to create and administer surveys and questionnaires using good data collection software. They can easily gather and process data from a large sample size with online surveys. 
  • As a result, they perform better than paper forms and other offline survey methods.

Face-to-Face Interviews

  • Face-to-face surveys are one of the most common ways to collect survey data.
  • Depending on the research context and the type of data you want to collect, face-to-face interviews for survey research can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. Unstructured and semi-structured interviews are conducted to collect qualitative data.
  • Conducting a structured interview, on the other hand, is the best way to collect quantifiable data from your research sample. However, face-to-face interviews take a long time and are quite expensive.

Telephone Surveys

  • In a telephone survey, the researcher calls the survey respondents and collects information from them by asking them questions about the research context. Because it involves communicating with respondents in order to collect and process valid data, a telephone survey is similar to a face-to-face survey.
  • However, this method has a number of drawbacks, including the fact that it is costly and time-consuming.

How to Design a Survey

It’s important to consider the objective of a survey before creating one. The following are some examples of common uses:

    • Identifying the needs and wants of customers.
    • Timely feedback is being collected.
    • Identifying and prioritizing problems to fix in order to assess customer satisfaction.
    • Taking a look at the planned adjustments. Whether or not a change was successful.
    • Market research is being conducted well.
    • Employee satisfaction is being tracked over time.

Now that you know why surveys are so widely used let us see how to design a survey. 

The following steps are:

Step 1: Determine what outcome you want to get from the survey and how you’ll put the information to use. Make a list of specific information you’d like to gain from your survey, as well as a few simple questions you think will help you answer your hypotheses. Also, Include the set of possible answers.

Step 2: Write down the percentage of responses you’d expect in each bucket next to the answers. This will help you to compare the future results to these guesses. As a result, this will show where your intuition is strong and where you have imperfections.

Step 3: Choose the most appropriate survey type. By identifying the population group, you can determine who and how they should be surveyed. If they’re too big to survey everyone, figure out how to get a sample. 

Step 4: Determine what demographic data is required to analyze and comprehend the results. Decide whether the survey’s responses will be numerical, statistical ranking, yes-no, multiple-choice, open-ended, or a combination of these.

Step 5: Create a list of questions and possible answers for multiple-choice questions. Reduce the number of questions on your list to the absolute minimum. Keep in mind what you want to know and how you’ll use what you’ve discovered.

Step 6: Print the questionnaire or the list of questions for the interviewer. With a small group of people, test the survey. Gather their feedback.

    • Which of the questions confused readers? Were the options for answers clear? Were they conceptualized the way you wanted them to be?
    • How long did it take on average for a respondent to complete the survey?
    • Were there any spelling mistakes or printing errors on the questionnaire?
    • Did participants want to comment on topics that weren’t covered? Here, open-ended questions are a good indicator.

Step 7: Based on the test results, revise the survey. Tabulate and analyse the data. Everyone involved should be informed of the results and plans. If a sample was used, include the margin of error and confidence level in the report.

Remember that as your survey’s scope expands, fewer people will respond, making it more difficult for employees to act on the results. This pre-survey process will help assist you in synthesizing the survey’s most important aspects and guiding your design process.

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05

6 Tips For Designing Online Questionnaires

  • Keep the language simple.

It’s important to ensure that survey questions are clear and understandable while designing them. There’s an essential factor that some of your respondents won’t know what all of the words signify, which might cause misunderstanding. You may wish to include technical vocabulary particular to your industry, but selectively. If your questions aren’t descriptive enough, your responders may guess at the answers, resulting in irrelevant statistics.

  • Keep in mind your target market.

It is essential to keep your target audience in mind when creating an online questionnaire. This will enable you to use the most suitable vocabulary and ask the most effective questions.

  • Allow people to choose whether or not to answer personal questions.

There are numerous online questionnaires that ask respondents for personal information. Some people are hesitant to share this information. Instead of an actual answer, you might add an answer that states “prefer not to say.” Also, make sure your inquiry isn’t marked as “required.”

If you want to include personal questions in your questionnaire design, make sure you give your respondents the option to skip the question if they so desire too. This will make individuals feel  better because you will not be pressuring them to respond.

  • To clarify information, use photos and videos.

Instead of writing a long description, attach an image that participants can rate, because it’s possible that no matter how well-worded your question is, at times it won’t be understood by participants. If you want to ask participants how they would feel about a new product, for example, simply describing the idea with words may not work. To avoid any misunderstanding, it’s important to illustrate the inquiry with pictures or videos.

  • Allow respondents to select “Other” as a response option.

When constructing multiple choice free online surveys, including “other” as an option for respondents to select is beneficial. Some of your responders may not see their response reflected in the options you’ve provided, and if they don’t have the option to choose “other,” there’s a considerable possibility they’ll pick any answer. As a result, survey data will be affected.

  • Select the Correct Software

Choose a user-friendly yet advanced online questionnaire software that allows you to generate online surveys without any technical experience. You should be able to either design your own questionnaires or use one of their questionnaire templates.

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06

Conclusion

As previously stated, conducting survey research online is one of the most effective methods of data gathering because it allows you to obtain accurate information from a big number of people. It is essential to understand how survey research works as a researcher, organization, individual, or student in order to use it effectively and get the most out of this approach of detailed analysis. 

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