Creating the Perfect Survey: A Guide

Surveys, especially those in a quantitative format, speak the language of business. It is a research method that involves collecting numerical data from a target audience. When used in a business setting, it can be used to understand more about the audiences’ perspective, experience, or emotions related to the company in question. When designed correctly, these surveys can help unlock some incredible insights for several key stakeholders, including investors, consultants, and the companies themselves. However, completing a survey’s design can be difficult- therefore, it is imperative that four major steps are followed. 

As with any successful project, there must be careful planning that precedes any major decisions. That is why the first step of the quality survey design process is the planning and scoping stage, where the creators determine what it is they are trying to find out (the research objective), and what they are trying to ask. One way to arrive at these conclusions is to ask the five Ws as questions. The first is asking WHY are you doing this research, which leads to creating the research objective. WHAT questions need to be asked leads to creating a basic survey outline. WHO you want to take the survey leads to creating a respondent profile. Asking WHEN the survey should launch and close leads to creating a survey timeline. Finally, figuring out WHERE people could take the survey determines which mobile format it will take. 

Once the initial planning stage has been completed, it is time for the very important authoring and creating state, where the questions that will be used in the survey are written. It is imperative that a survey is written with understandable and objective questions that are straightforward and objective. There are three main types of questions to avoid to make sure that this is the case. Leading questions are questions that are designed to influence the participant. This can skew the results of the survey, so it is best to remove any type of words that create bias. Loaded questions already assume an answer, so these are best to avoid as well. Finally, double barrel questions, or questions that ask two questions at once, are not good practice either. 

Once the survey has been planned out and authored, it is now time for the execution part of the process, where the survey will make its big debut. First, the survey must be tested for any final mistakes and to make sure it works the way it is supposed to. Then, once the survey is finally opened on the chosen platforms, responses will begin to flood in. Some survey creators will probably choose to conduct some early analysis on the data and make sure that the responses are in line with what they were anticipating. This stage will continue for as long as the survey timeline has been designated, unless the company feels that they have not already collected enough responses. 

The final, and arguably most important, part of the survey design process is the analysis and reporting stage, which essentially determines the “so what?” of the entire survey’s release. Once the proper amount of data has been collected, it can be exported to analysis tools that are equipped to help clean and organize data in a way that makes any important insights obvious. Excel is usually a popular choice for businesses, but there are plenty of other tools. Most have features to help transform the data into a visual model, such as a line, bar, or pie chart. Each type of chart can be used to discover a specific insight. For example, a line chart tracks a value over time, while a pie chart is useful for breaking down a whole into separate components. 

There are many ways to approach a survey’s execution. Some companies chose the self-managed approach, which means that the entire survey planning process is conducted manually. Pros include complete control over development and timelines, and subject matter experts are deeply involved. However, it can also lead to a lot of mistakes if the survey designers don’t have experience. The other side of the spectrum is asynchronous programming, which uses iterations and revisions to create the survey completely using technology. No programming knowledge is required, but this means the company’s timeline is reliant on the programmer and the iterations must be completed. Companies have found a balance between both methods to be optimal, so there is still control over the timeline, but all of the survey generating doesn’t have to be manually created.

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