10 Effective Tips For Creating A Good Survey

You don’t have to be an expert to create a survey but by following a few survey best practices, you can achieve the design of a good survey that will collect useful data.

In this article, we’ll focus on how to design a survey that is simple for respondents to complete and poses specific, pertinent research-related questions.
Let’s begin by defining what a survey is and what makes a successful survey for emphasis.

A Survey is a research method that is used for collecting data from a selected sample of individuals to gain insights on various topics of interest.

A Good Survey is a survey that has good design i.e. easy to use, intuitive and generates a good survey response rate.

Factors That Define The Success of A Survey

The success of a survey is determined by a number of factors, with cost, range, sample accuracy, time needed to gather responses, distribution technique, and survey quality being some of the most important ones. A good survey will result from taking these many factors into account.

Top 10 Tips To Create A Good Survey

1. Define The Survey Purpose: The survey’s purpose should be clear, relevant and feasible. It is also best to have the purpose defined before mapping out survey questions. The idea is to come up with a specific and measurable goal for the survey that way, you ensure your questions are focused on what you want to achieve. Having clear objectives helps in assuring the respondent that information shared will be confidential which aids to the survey success.
2. Let Each Question Count: The importance of judiciously using survey questions cannot be over emphasized. Every question should aim at getting relevant insight for your research. The type of survey questions to be used is dependent on the objective of the research. When some existing data is known about the respondent, short surveys and close ended questions should be used. For extensive research, open ended questions, long-form questions and survey are used to aid in-depth data collection.
3. Add Survey Progress Bar: This is an important factor as it helps in the data collection process by allowing the respondent know how far they have come in the survey and how much time is left. It keeps the interest of the respondent.
4. Speak Your Respondents Language: Your survey questions should use language and terminology that your respondent will understand. Using technical jargon could make the respondent feel that the survey is not for them and then drop out. Keep the language as plain as possible but be careful not to over simplify a question to the point that it’s meaning changes.
5. Avoid Biased And Leading Questions: Avoid any leading, biased or misleading questions when creating a survey to ensure good quality data. Certain words and phrases could introduce bias into your questions and point the respondent in the direction of a particular answer. Keep your questions focused on the opinions of the respondent rather than introducing any option that can be construed as your own point of view. For example, if a clothing company like Zara wants to collect feedback on the quality of their clothes, a biased and leading question would be asked as - “is clothing from Zara of better quality than clothing from Shein ?” This gives the respondent no opportunity to provide their original opinion on your product as their choice of answer is now limited to a yes or no option thereby rendering the survey pointless.
6. Ask Direct Questions: If your survey questions are worded vaguely, it would confuse respondents, they would not have a clear understanding of what information they are supposed to provide making your resulting data inefficacious. It is better to mention a specific situation rather than a general tendency, this way, the respondent can provide relevant insights.
7. Test Survey: The survey needs to be properly evaluated to ensure that all the questions are rendering correctly and the survey logic is sound before it is distributed to the sample of possible responders.
8. Use questions with consistent rating scales: Make sure the scales are constant throughout the survey if you ask questions with rating scales. A respondent could become perplexed if you utilize scales from -5 to +5 in one question and -3 to +3 in another. The respondent may get disinterested in the survey if, for example, in one question, a -5 suggests “Very Disappointed,” while in another, a -3 indicates the same variable.
9. Send Reminders: Reminders can boost the survey response rate. While frequent periodic reminders aid towards the survey completion rate and ultimately being regarded a good survey, it is crucial to avoid spamming the respondent who could want to disconnect with your brand to avoid inconveniencing reminders.
10. Provide Incentives: Nobody enjoys doing anything for free. Offering incentives may increase the chances of the survey being considered good because more people will take the survey. The incentive could be monetary, in the form of a commodity, or simply access to the research report following the completion of the study.

See an example of good and bad question forms;

Note that in the question forms categorized as bad, the questions tend to be leading and pose no chance for the responder to fully give insight on their opinion. On the other hand, the good questions are direct, simple and gives the responder the option of providing detailed response that will facilitate a successful survey.

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