When I was a consultant, one of the most difficult challenges I faced when talking with customers was recognizing which acronyms I should know and which I shouldn’t. I still remember getting it wrong at a meeting in 1991 when I asked about a term that I should have known: not knowing that “CA” was an abbreviation for Computer Associates definitely damaged my credibility with that particular client. Fortunately, the hundreds of surveys I conducted with telecoms managers gave me a great background for our telco clients: I had a good accuracy rate there, asking them to define only those three-letter acronyms that were specific to their organizations, referring to custom MIS systems, market segments and even names of subsidiaries.

 

You don’t want to make your respondents have to work so hard. They’re not trying to impress you. One of my eight recommendations for writing objective questions was to “avoid industry jargon and acronyms”.  You’ve internalized many terms and phrases particular to your organization and industry.

 

Avoiding jargon, though, is easier said than done. Sometimes the nature of the research you are doing requires a high degree of specialized terminology, terms which most of your respondents will know. For those that don’t, it is helpful to set up a survey glossary, such as the following illustration of a survey of retail employees:

 

 

If you set this glossary up in Vovici v4, in the questionnaire each keyword you defined will be underlined. If the respondent hovers over a keyword, the glossary entry will be displayed as a tooltip:

 

 

If you are using other survey applications, you can achieve this effect manually by turning keywords into hyperlinks to a popup glossary page.

 

For those times when you can’t remove the jargon from your questions altogether, make sure you define and clarify your terms for your respondents.