Surveys can be powerful tools for gathering data. However, not all of them are equally effective. There’s a huge difference in the quality of the data provided by a poorly conceived survey versus a well-written one, so it’s important for not just researchers but also organizational leaders, business owners, and team managers to follow industry best practices like those described below.
Start By Developing Goals
According to the article, The Employee Survey: Major Mistakes Organizations Still Make, failing to develop goals prior to creating a survey can significantly reduce its effectiveness. Every survey created for a business, non-profit, or research firm should have a distinct purpose, whether it’s to identify factors that could be contributing to high employee turnover rates or ways to improve customer experience. Sending out surveys that are too broad will reduce the chances that people will respond truthfully to every question, and sticking to developed goals can help to avoid that problem.
Limit Open-Ended Questions
It may be tempting to include a lot of open-ended questions to give people more chances to express personal opinions, but according to realtimecampaign.com, that’s a mistake. Most people don’t want to put a lot of thought into creating personalized responses. They want to answer multiple-choice or simple yes-or-no questions. It’s fine to include one targeted open-ended question, but make sure to include it towards the end of the survey.
Keep Things Short and Simple
Research shows that shorter surveys produce not just higher response and completion rates but also more reliable data. According to this informative post, the ideal web survey should take around ten minutes to complete, and no web survey should require more than 20 minutes of participants’ time. Even for things like employee surveys, where the respondents are required to provide feedback, it’s best to limit the number of questions to improve the quality of the data.
Make The Survey User-Friendly
It’s important for survey creators to remember that not everyone is exceptionally computer-savvy. Some participants may have trouble completing the survey if it is not well-designed and user-friendly. Choose a survey design tool like Qualtrics that comes with pre-designed templates and API integration to ensure that the resulting survey will be easy to read and easy to fill out.
Pre-Test the Survey
Before sending the completed survey out to its full intended audience, it’s wise to do some pre-testing. Send the survey to just a few trusted members of the target audience, whether it’s coworkers or consumers, and ask for feedback. These initial survey-takers will be able to help the creators find glitches and identify questions that could be interpreted erroneously or in unexpected ways. If possible, schedule a focus group to discuss the results of the test survey.
Get Started Early
The key to creating the perfect survey is to devote plenty of time to the process. Start by brainstorming goals and questions, choose a reputable web survey creation tool, and make as many revisions as necessary to get everything right. If the pre-test shows major problems, getting started early will allow the survey’s designers the time required to resolve them.
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