Although they are inexpensive
and product fast results, online surveys still need to be
conducted properly to be really effective. The key steps
for conducting effective online surveys are:
- Identify your objective
- Decide what information
you need
- Develop a questionnaire
- Conduct the survey
- Analyze the responses
- Recommend a course of
action
* Identify your objective
Online surveys are
conducted to find out the characteristics, behaviors,
opinions, and knowledge of a particular population. No
matter what the subject matter, all surveys are conducted
with an objective, to gather information relevant to a
specific problem or situation. And the key to a successful
survey is clearly identifying that objective upfront. To
do that, ask yourself "what problem am I trying to
solve?" The ideal objective has a narrow scope and
can be clearly stated. The wider the scope, the more
complex your survey and the less meaningful its results.
Always remember, your survey is only as good as your
understanding of your objective!
* Decide what information
you need
Once you have defined your
objective, identify the information you need to gather to
achieve your objective. If the objective is clear and
narrow, the information you need to gather will be
apparent. Be specific and avoid the temptation to gather
"extra" bits of information that are "nice
to know" but not relevant to your objective. Once you
have identified the information you need, you should
explore the possibility of gathering it from existing data
sources. With an abundance of information available from
corporate databases and public information sources, you
might gather the information without even conducting a
survey!
* Develop a questionnaire
Developing the
questionnaire is undoubtedly the most important part of
conducting a survey. The quality of the questions will
determine the quality of the results and the effectiveness
of your survey. Get tips for developing an effective
questionnaire.
* Conduct the survey
Once you have developed the
questionnaire, you need to test it on a few people to
determine if it is clearly written and can be understood
by people representing your potential respondents. Testing
the survey might take several iterations, but it is well
worth the effort. Once you are satisfied that your
questionnaire is clear and unambiguous, you are ready to
conduct your survey.
If you are going to
distribute your survey through email, make sure that your
email message is clear and compelling. A boring message
will not get the attention of your potential respondents
and decrease your response rate. Additionally, you should
also remember the following things:
- Address emails to a
single person whenever possible.
- Always use the blind
carbon copy (BCC) if you must send a single email
message to a group of people.
- Include a valid email
address in the "From" field or the
recipients will consider your message as spam.
- Provide the URL that
will take people directly to your survey, if you are
inviting them to the website to take the survey.
- Tell recipients how to
contact you if they have a problem or concern.
- Identify the source of
purchased email addresses so recipients know who to
contact if they want to be removed from the list.
- Ignore the
"flame" or "hate" messages you
might receive in response to your email invitation. A
small percentage of the recipients always take offense
to something or the other.
If you are going to
distribute your survey from your website, you need to
consider how will get visitors to take the survey. If your
site has just enough traffic, you can probably place a
hypertext link on your home page through which visitors
can reach your survey. If you have very heavy traffic, you
can use a program on your web server to randomly deliver
your survey to some of the visitors. However, if your
website doesn't have enough traffic, you should consider
sending invitations by email or other traditional methods.
Once you have sent out
notifications, responses will begin to come in
immediately. For online surveys that invite individual
participants (email or postal mail), most people will
respond within 72 hours of receiving your invitation.
Surveys that rely on passive participation (clicking on
website links or responding to indirect advertising)
generally take much longer. In either case, you need to
decide how long to keep your surve active based on your
target audience and how many responses you need to
collect. If you are surveying a known group of people
(e.g. customers, employees, students, etc) you might need
to send out reminders to remind some people to take the
survey.
* Analyze the responses
You can begin to analyze
the responses as soon as you receive them. Unlike
traditional methods, online surveys make it possible to
analyze responses without human intervention. Responses
are received in electronic format and immediately added to
a database. Once in the database, they can be manipulated
with a variety of tools, including the survey software,
statistical packages, spreadsheets, and presentation
programs. The key to proper analysis of online surveys is
no different than that for traditional methods. You must
be able to filter the data and display results in a
variety of formats for effective analysis. And always
remember to relate the analysis back to your objective.
* Recommend a course of
action
The last step in conducting
effective online surveys is to recommend a course of
action. With your objective in mind, you should be able to
recommend specific actions as a result of your survey.
Your recommendations can vary widely depending upon the
nature of the problem you are trying to solve. If you
cannot identify any actions as a result of your survey,
then it is highly possible that your objective was too
broad, your information needs were incorrect or
incomplete, or your questionnaire was poorly written. In
these cases, your recommended action should be to conduct
further study.
© Web Based Survey
Software (http://www.web-based-survey-software.org)
2004
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