The Steps in a Survey Project
- Establish the goals of the project - What you want to learn?
- Determine your sample - Whom you will interview?
- Choose interviewing methodology - How you will interview?
- Create your questionnaire - What you will ask?
- Pre-test the questionnaire, if practical - Test the questions
- Conduct interviews and enter data - Ask the questions
- Analyze the data - Produce the reports
1. What do you want to learn?
This is the important first step to your survey project. Choose a topic you are interested in and want to find out about people's behavior and/or their opinions about one topic. It can be about lifestyle, culture, education, politics, commerce - anything is fine as long as it is clear and doable.
2. Your interview subjects
To get a large population of respondees, it is advisable to ask students. If you have another group of people that is large, then you can survey them instead. The point is that the people you ask should be relevant to your topic, and the method for surveying is suitable to the people. Also, you need to get a large enough sample in order to make any conclusions about your results. 100 respondents is ideal - what can you manage? Remember that some people will not answer your survey or they will not answer it completely, so you need to throw those surveys away. The way to count the survey respondents is by counting the fully completed surveys only.
3. How will you conduct the interview?
You have the choices of a paper survey (using a paper you distribute), a one-on-one interview, or an online survey. For the last option, surveymonkey is a popular web survey making site where you can make your survey for free.
4. What will you ask?
This is a very very important step. You need to have clear questions that will give you the results you need. Here are some tips for making good questions.
Question Types
Researchers use three basic types of questions: multiple choice, numeric open end and text open end (sometimes called "verbatims").
Rating Scales and Agreement Scales are two common types of questions that some researchers treat as multiple choice questions and others treat as numeric open end questions. Examples of these kinds of questions are:
Question and Answer Choice Order
There are two broad issues to keep in mind when considering question and answer choice order. One is how the question and answer choice order can encourage people to complete your survey. The other issue is how the order of questions or the order of answer choices could affect the results of your survey.
Ideally, the early questions in a survey should be easy and pleasant to answer. These kinds of questions encourage people to continue the survey. In telephone or personal interviews they help build rapport with the interviewer. Grouping together questions on the same topic also makes the questionnaire easier to answer.
Whenever possible leave difficult or sensitive questions until near the end of your survey. Any rapport that has been built up will make it more likely people will answer these questions. If people quit at that point anyway, at least they will have answered most of your questions.
Answer choice order can make individual questions easier or more difficult to answer. Whenever there is a logical or natural order to answer choices, use it. Always present agree-disagree choices in that order. Presenting them in disagree-agree order will seem odd. For the same reason, positive to negative and excellent to poor scales should be presented in those orders. When using numeric rating scales higher numbers should mean a more positive or more agreeing answer.
Other General Tips
*Keep the questionnaire as short as possible. More people will complete a shorter questionnaire, regardless of the interviewing method. If a question is not necessary, do not include it.
*Start with a Title (e.g., Leisure Activities Survey). *Always include a short introduction - who you are and why you are doing the survey. Reassure your respondent that his or her responses will not be revealed to your client, but only combined with many others to learn about overall attitudes. Ask the respondents to do the survey and thank them in advance for doing it. Write your name and your class name.
* Do not put two questions into one. Avoid questions such as "Do you buy frozen meat and frozen fish?" A "Yes" answer can mean the respondent buys meat or fish or both. Similarly with a question such as "Have you ever bought Product X and, if so, did you like it?" A "No" answer can mean "never bought" or "bought and disliked." Be as specific as possible. "Do you ever buy pasta?" can include someone who once bought some in 1990. It does not tell you whether the pasta was dried, frozen or canned and may include someone who had pasta in a restaurant. It is better to say "Have you bought pasta (other than in a restaurant) in the last three months?" "If yes, was it frozen, canned or dried?" Few people can remember what they bought more than three months ago unless it was a major purchase such as an automobile or appliance.
*Avoid technical terms and acronyms, unless you are absolutely sure that respondents know they mean. *Make sure your questions accept all the possible answers. A question like "Do you use regular or premium gas in your car?" does not cover all possible answers. The owner may alternate between both types. The question also ignores the possibility of diesel or electric-powered cars. A better way of asking this question would be "Which type(s) of fuel do you use in your cars?" The responses allowed might be:
*Start with a Title (e.g., Leisure Activities Survey). *Always include a short introduction - who you are and why you are doing the survey. Reassure your respondent that his or her responses will not be revealed to your client, but only combined with many others to learn about overall attitudes. Ask the respondents to do the survey and thank them in advance for doing it. Write your name and your class name.
* Do not put two questions into one. Avoid questions such as "Do you buy frozen meat and frozen fish?" A "Yes" answer can mean the respondent buys meat or fish or both. Similarly with a question such as "Have you ever bought Product X and, if so, did you like it?" A "No" answer can mean "never bought" or "bought and disliked." Be as specific as possible. "Do you ever buy pasta?" can include someone who once bought some in 1990. It does not tell you whether the pasta was dried, frozen or canned and may include someone who had pasta in a restaurant. It is better to say "Have you bought pasta (other than in a restaurant) in the last three months?" "If yes, was it frozen, canned or dried?" Few people can remember what they bought more than three months ago unless it was a major purchase such as an automobile or appliance.
*Avoid technical terms and acronyms, unless you are absolutely sure that respondents know they mean. *Make sure your questions accept all the possible answers. A question like "Do you use regular or premium gas in your car?" does not cover all possible answers. The owner may alternate between both types. The question also ignores the possibility of diesel or electric-powered cars. A better way of asking this question would be "Which type(s) of fuel do you use in your cars?" The responses allowed might be:
*If you want only one answer from each person, ensure that the options are mutually exclusive. For example:
This question ignores the possibility of someone living in a house or an apartment in the suburbs.
*Score or rating scale questions (e.g., "If '5' means very good and '1' means very poor how would rate this product?") are a particular problem. Researchers are very divided on this issue. Many surveys use a ten-point scale, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that anything over a five point scale is irrelevant. This depends partially on education. Among university graduates a ten point scale will work well. Among people with less than a high school education five points is sufficient. In some populations, a three-point scale (good/acceptable/bad) may be all some respondents can understand.
*Be sure any rating scale labels are meaningful. For example:
*Score or rating scale questions (e.g., "If '5' means very good and '1' means very poor how would rate this product?") are a particular problem. Researchers are very divided on this issue. Many surveys use a ten-point scale, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that anything over a five point scale is irrelevant. This depends partially on education. Among university graduates a ten point scale will work well. Among people with less than a high school education five points is sufficient. In some populations, a three-point scale (good/acceptable/bad) may be all some respondents can understand.
*Be sure any rating scale labels are meaningful. For example:
A question phrased like the one above will force most answers into the middle category, resulting in very little usable information.
Because people like to think of themselves as normal or average, the range of answer choices you give when asking for a quantity or a frequency can affect the results. For example if you ask people how many hours of television they watch in a day and you offer the choices:
Because people like to think of themselves as normal or average, the range of answer choices you give when asking for a quantity or a frequency can affect the results. For example if you ask people how many hours of television they watch in a day and you offer the choices:
you will get fewer people picking 4 or more than if you offered the choices:
The first list of choices makes 4 hours sound extreme, while the second list of choices makes it seem typical.
*Leave your demographic questions (age, gender, income, education, etc.) to the end.
*Paper questionnaires requiring text answers, should always leave sufficient space for handwritten answers. Lines should be about half-an-inch (one cm.) apart. The number of lines you should have depends on the question. Three to five lines are average.
*Leave a space at the end of a questionnaire entitled "Other Comments." Sometimes respondents offer casual remarks that are worth their weight in gold and cover some area you did not think of, but which respondents consider critical.
*Always consider the layout of your questionnaire. This is especially important on paper, computer direct and Internet surveys. You want to make it attractive, easy to understand and easy to complete. If you are creating a paper survey, you also want to make it easy to enter the answers.
*Paper questionnaires requiring text answers, should always leave sufficient space for handwritten answers. Lines should be about half-an-inch (one cm.) apart. The number of lines you should have depends on the question. Three to five lines are average.
*Leave a space at the end of a questionnaire entitled "Other Comments." Sometimes respondents offer casual remarks that are worth their weight in gold and cover some area you did not think of, but which respondents consider critical.
*Always consider the layout of your questionnaire. This is especially important on paper, computer direct and Internet surveys. You want to make it attractive, easy to understand and easy to complete. If you are creating a paper survey, you also want to make it easy to enter the answers.
Surveys are a mixture of science and art, and a good researcher will save their cost many times over by knowing how to ask the correct question/
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