How to Design a Survey By Frank Lucer At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

A well-designed survey will collect valuable data. It can lead to increased sales volume, higher employee retention rates, and improved customer satisfaction. Sadly, much of this opportunity is wasted due to questionnaires which are developed poorly. Sometimes, the questions are misleading or unclear. Other times, the designer fails to approach the process systematically and as a result, collects data that is irrelevant and unusable.

In this article, we'll address how to properly design a survey. We'll approach the process methodically beginning with defining your objective. You'll also learn how to identify your audience, develop your questions, and create a system for analyzing the responses and taking action on the results.

Define Your Primary Objective

Before you can begin developing your questions, you must define what your main goal is for the responses. As they say, begin with the end in mind. Collecting usable data is only as useful as the purpose for which the data is intended.

For example, are you trying to identify market demand for a new product that is currently in development? Do you need to find out what your customers think about your company's support staff? Would you like to know how satisfied your employees are in working for your company? Determine why you want to collect information from your respondents. That will help you identify your primary objective.

Identify Your Target Audience

Accurate information provided by the wrong audience has limited value. You need to make sure that your questionnaire is presented to the right group of people. If you're surveying people online, targeting your audience may be directly related to your deployment method.

For example, if you have a segmented email list of customers and leads, you can target your audience by segmentation criteria (i.e. annual purchase volume, recent activity, etc.). It's a simple matter of emailing personalized invitations with a link to your online questionnaire. You can also use a pop-up display on your website that appears immediately following a customer's purchase. Or, if the purpose of your survey is to generate leads, you can easily embed it within a landing page on your site. Then, funnel first-time visitors to that page.

Map Your Structure And Develop Your Questions

The next step is to plan your survey's structure and create your questions. The structure should incorporate multiple pages, skip logic, and response piping. You want to make it as easy as possible for your respondents to participate. That means eliminating redundancy. If you already have a respondent's first and last name, prefill the appropriate fields.

The questions you ask will play a key role in encouraging honest and useful responses. Be clear. A lack of clarity can have disastrous results. Also, try to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative questions. Both can yield valuable insight in different ways. Mixing multiple choice, rating and ranking scales, matrix, and open-ended questions can help maintain your respondents' attention while soliciting valuable information.

Design An Analysis And Implementation System

The last step in designing your survey is to create a system for analyzing responses and taking action on the results. Depending on the complexity of your questionnaire, you may need software to help with the analysis. The results should be fed into a continuous feedback system. As batches of responses come in, members of your survey team can address them.

You'll notice that the process we've described above facilitates a smooth flow of constant feedback. Once your primary objective has been determined, your survey can be deployed automatically to the right audience. If your questions have been designed carefully, the responses will be immediately useful. They can be fed into your analysis process and funneled directly to the members of your survey team tasked with addressing them.

Once developed, it's a seamless process that yields ongoing value.

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