3 Essential Steps to Quality Surveys

Surveys are invaluable for organizations and amusing for general public. Quality is easy to achieve in their making if you take care of the type and amount. All you have to do is to ask the right type of questions in the right amount. You also need the right type of respondents in sufficient amount while collecting data. That way you will be confident about the outcome and organize it around your client’s needs.

Here are the three essential steps to attaining quality in your surveys.

1. Focus

No one ever achieved anything big without having to focus on the targeted result. Before you start, it is imperative that you ask yourself the following question:

• What result am I looking for?
• What’s my topic?
• How much data do I need?
• What will get respondents?
• Who is the targeted audience?

Once you have clear answers to these questions, you are in perfect position to create an effective survey that will yield accurate results.

2. Respondents

Although, it depends on the type of the survey, you should also consider finding alternative avenues to market your survey.

• In addition to email mailing lists, you should also consider posting your survey to newsgroups and web communities.
• A personalized invitation message along with the survey, results in an increased response rate by at least 5 per cent. Try using “Dear Mr. ____” instead of “Dear Valued Alumni.”
• Be precise in your email and be very clear about privacy protection.
• Send reminder emails.
• Offer a bonus on forwarding the survey to their contacts.

3. Audience

With a clear focus and right type of respondents, you collect sufficient data for larger audience. After the data collection, comes the stage where you market the survey results.

• Make use of graphs, charts, and other attention-grabbing visuals.
• Keep the summary of results brief. It shouldn’t consist of more than a few (2-3) sentences.
• If you want to give more detailed analysis, start the summary by giving a clear conclusion.
• You can use plenty of bullet points to improve readability.
• Let the readers know how your data was beneficial right from the beginning.

Surveys are awesome! If you don’t believe it, try SurveyCrest’s free amazing templates and let us know how much you agree. 😉