Before we jump on to the survey, examples, and ideas, let’s start by learning the survey basics. A survey compilation of some questions about a specific topic, a product, an issue, or a topic asked from a targeted audience to develop insights about the respective topic.
Surveys are an essential academic tool as well and are widely used in arts subjects. Surveys form a big part of research at university level subjects in marketing, psychology, and other related humanitarian subjects.
The role of surveys is enormous, to give you a simple idea to think about a census. A census is also a survey carried out nationwide to gather several types of information about the citizens like the total number, employment status, financial status, literacy rate, etc. Modern marketing strategies use surveys to enhance sales.
From where to begin?
Wikipedia defines a survey as, “In research of human subjects, a survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and sometimes face-to-face on busy street corners or in malls. Surveys are used to increase knowledge in fields such as social research and demography.”
So, while writing a survey, always keep the human factor in mind. Start by getting your heads together and brainstorm ideas of what could be of value to ask your readers. What could be included and what could be excluded. Keep on deliberating at your survey questions and create a draft. After several careful deliberations, you can create a good survey draft that will fetch your results.
Always keep the goal of your survey in focus. Ask yourself and your team to fill out the survey drafts before finalizing them. The type of survey also holds a vital position in deciding the tone of the survey.
Types of surveys
There are several types of surveys, but one can mainly divide the surveys into two basic categories.
Academic Surveys: These questionnaires are used by the researchers to test their hypothesis and conclude a research question. Academic surveys are generally focused on a specific target question as per the research question, and their scope is purely academic at the initial stages.
Marketing Surveys: Marketing surveys are mainly focused on the marketing aspects of a business and its products. Businesses gather crucial customer input about products and use the data in policy decisions or enhance the quality of their products and services. There are several subcategories of marketing surveys.
How to compose questions for a survey?
The next big question is how to compose survey questions, and it indeed is imperative because ill-structured questions will yield vague answers. Vague answers won’t produce the desired results hence will result in wasted efforts. A bland survey questionnaire will either bore or annoy the sample audience.
- Language: Always try to use easily understandable, simple words. Difficult or rare words won’t help you get the best results as you will confuse many of the surveyed. A simple, easy to understand question will yield better response as compared to challenging and complex questions.
- To the point questions: Always ask specific questions. Don’t beat around the bush; asking irrelevant questions can result in a failed survey. A dissertation writing service is likely to ask academic questions rather than Hollywood questions.
- Do not ask everything in a single question. A common mistake many surveyors’ commit is that they ask multiple questions in a single question. Readers might found it too lengthy. For example, a questionnaire about stress relief can be divided into issues of stress, remedial approach, therapies, and avoiding stress sections rather than merging all into one single question.
- Add interval questions that are not merely multiple-choice or Yes/No question but ask the interviewee’s opinion. Such as how they would shorten an essay rather than giving them prefabricated answers about essays’ length reduction. Such a question can give you a new dimension in your research, and you can build upon the ideas from responses.
- Make sure you ask a single thing in a question and don’t confuse the audience by pouring several ideas into a single question.
Ideas to inspire your audience
The most critical factor in any survey is the target audience. Most of the time, people avoid filling out the surveys as they consider it a waste of their time. The following ideas will help you inspire your audience to fill out the survey. Do you know the amount of 1 billion dollars in rupees? If you don’t know about it just search it on Google by writing ‘1 billion dollars in rupees’. Then you can sort out the estimated result as 74,162,650,000.00 Indian Rupee.
- Do your surveys like a quiz. If you are emailing a survey to people, you will surely get higher responses if you wrap your survey in a quiz gift box. “Fill out our survey” has a tiring vibe associated with while “take our amazing quiz” stirs up the participants’ curiosity.
- Limit the number of questions to a minimum. Try to wrap up your online surveys to a total of 10 questions. The more the questions, the lower the chances of conversion.
- Ensure the privacy of people. It is essential as this will give your interviewee a sense of security. Dissertation writing services ensure the privacy of students while recording responses to protect their identity.
- Make them realize how much their opinion values to you. A sense of importance will rapidly increase the chance of better survey response. Add a phrase at the start that boosts the number of responders in the survey.
- Concisely inform them what ti is offering and how their contribution is of value.
- Keep the questions relevant to the topic and make sure that you value their time. Tell them at the start about the estimated completion time.
- Use images in the survey, if possible, to beautify the touring survey and make it less rigid.
- Try different channels to increase your response rates. Use emails, social media, physical channels, and telephonic channels to expand the number of responses.
- Use a scale or a graphic bar communicating how many questions are left.
- Briefly communicate the reasons and purpose of your survey.
There are many online tools available to help you create an excellent survey; they have many built-in templates and allow users to create custom templates. Google Surveys, Survey Monkey, and Typeform are the most popular amongst them.
