The Seven Steps to Highly Successful Surveys
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Aug 13, 2009
One of our more popular webinars is
The Seven Steps to Highly Successful Surveys. We’ve turned this into a short white paper, and it’s also the basis for my free 73-page ebook,
Survey Software Success. Here’s the Cliff Notes version of the steps to success for survey researchers:
- Focus on Your Goal: “Don't let your survey project go astray from the start: be certain to focus on a specific goal. Be precise about what information you need to gather and what you plan on doing with it.”
- Survey the Right Group of People: Use random sampling with these recommendations for sample size if you have thousands or more potential respondents; if you don’t have that many, then attempt a census instead.
- Craft Your Invitation Carefully: You have a lot of hurdles to jump in the race to turn recipients into respondents; make sure your email list is representative, maintain and use the unsubscribe list, get past spam filters, craft compelling subject lines and induce recipients to click that survey link and take the survey.
- Order Questions Logically: Put screener questions first, then open-ended questions, general questions, specific questions, demographics or firmographics and finally any follow-up questions. (Up-front open-ended questions are not appropriate to every survey but are important for needs analysis research, to prevent bias from later closed-end questions.)
- Write Objective Questions: “The saying Garbage In, Gospel Out reflects our willingness to believe computer output, even if it was generated from bad input. Survey researchers are no more immune to this tendency than computer scientists, as poorly worded questions can lead to suspect results and erroneous conclusions.”
- Shorten the Survey: It’s rare that I work on a research project where the questionnaire doesn’t need pruned before being published. Check out this post for six detailed suggestions on how to trim that survey.
- Close the Feedback Loop: “Your respondents complete the survey because they value their relationship with you, and they want to see you improve. Implicit in the fact that you sent them a survey is your intention to learn, adapt and change based on the results.”
OK, so now you don’t have to watch that particular webinar. So go watch one of our other complimentary
survey webinars instead!