Writing effective surveys : a guide
The trick to writing an effective survey is including the right questions at the right time. Below, we’ve put together a few tips for maximising the success of your next MyCommunity survey.
Contents
1. Project design
2. How should I use each type of question?
3. Common mistakes and how to avoid them
1. Project Design
Remember your audience and aims
Step one in our survey editor requires you to write a project page to encourage users to answer your survey. Make this page engaging and easy to read. If you’re surveying your community on a complex issue, shorten the description on your summary page and add the ‘more details’ link in the survey editor, directing them to a blog or article which explains the survey issue more fully. For your survey title, use a call to action such as “we need your help”, and stay persuasive when writing your project summary. Give your community a reason to answer your survey!
Use images wisely
A good image can make a great deal of difference to your campaign response. For your project page, choose a relevant and interesting image to encourage people to find out more.
Titles, titles, titles
With your project image, your project title is key to drawing MyCommunity users to your survey. It’s a snapshot of your campaign and might be the first time a respondent has considered your survey topic. Think carefully about the words you will use. Asking a question can often engage people much more effectively than a longwinded, obvious title.
Use brand power
If you’re hosting your survey for a large company or charity, use your brand to your advantage. MyCommunity users will be more likely to click on a project that includes a logo or brand name they already know – even if they disagree with what your organisation does or represents.
Be fontastic
In the survey editor, using bold to highlight words/paragraphs can be a great way of drawing attention to important aspects of your campaign. Keeping text too small is a good way of making your readers lose interest. Use your font wisely!
Stay focussed
You have published your survey in order to achieve a result. Make your aim clear throughout your project: link every paragraph in your project link back to your topic, and emphasise how the results you obtain will be applied in ‘real life’. Doing so empowers your community, and will encourage them to respond to your survey.
2. How should I use each type of question?
The MyCommunity survey editor allows you to use five different types of question, each of which is detailed below. It’s important to match your question type with the result you hope to achieve using it, and to avoid leading respondents to an obvious conclusion. As a survey host, you should aim to be as neutral and open as possible, thereby generating the most sincere answers from your respondents.
Single Choice
Single choice questions are best used when you need respondents to make a clear choice from a set of options (“yes/no/don’t know”) or provide a specific value (“1-2 years/3-4 years”...). Be sure to include all possible options, and a box for ‘not applicable’ or ‘other’ where appropriate.
Multi-Choice
Multi choice questions are used where a respondent can choose more than one option (“Which of the following cereals have you bought in the past six months?”). Be sure to provide all appropriate answers and an ‘other ‘option for respondents that don’t fit into your general categories. If most people are selecting the ‘other’ option, you may have forgotten a relevant category and are therefore missing out on demographic information that could be useful for your results. Always research your options thoroughly before your project goes live – especially by proofreading your survey with friends or colleagues.
Comment Boxes
Comment boxes allow you to obtain descriptive feedback about a chosen topic. The data provided will be qualitative (word-based); if you’re looking for respondents to give a number (“How many employees work at your business?”), use a single choice option instead. This will make your data easier to analyse. Comment boxes can take a long time for respondents to fill out. If you have a long survey, numerous comment boxes might deter people from answering in the first place. Use them sparingly!
Text Boxes
Text questions allow users to type a response up to 64 characters. They’re best used when you need a descriptive response, but not one as long as a comment box would offer. Providing job titles or the names of a school would be a good use of a text question. As with comment questions, do bear in mind that text responses will be difficult to analyse quantitatively (ie., with numbers). If you’re looking for a numerical response to your question (how many people answering your survey work in a particular sector, for example), a single choice selection question will provide more useful data.
Matrix Questions
Matrix questions are for assessing opinion along a quantifiable scale – from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”, for example. Be sure to cover all types of opinion by using a scale that ranges from a strong negative (“almost never”) to a strong positive (“almost always”).
Providing an even number of options will force people to have an opinion on the topic, whereas an odd number will allow people to express no opinion by selecting a mid-point (“neither agree nor disagree”). These middle options can be useful in themselves. A question might not apply to certain respondents of your survey, so adding a “don’t know” option or similar can be a good idea to prevent survey dropout.
3. Common mistakes and how not to make them
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Mandatory questions
Making a question ‘mandatory’ means a respondent cannot proceed with your survey until they have provided an answer. This is useful on occasions where you need to gather vital information, but only use the mandatory setting when you have a good reason for doing so – they can prevent a respondent from completing your survey. Be sure to provide enough answer options to suit all respondents. On a multiple choice question, add an ‘other’ option, for example.
Keep clarity
Make sure your respondents know how to answer your question by making your wording as clear as possible. When using negatives in questions, it’s usually best to embolden or CAPITALISE them to ensure that people answer appropriately. Example: “Which of these options have you NOT experienced before?”
Stay relevant
This one’s obvious; make sure your questions are examining only the topic you’re interested in (this is called ‘internal validity’). If your survey summary mentions three options for a potential development, include all three options in your survey questions, as forcing respondents to choose from only two may prevent them completing your survey. Using the preview tool makes it easy to check your survey summary and questions with colleagues and friends before publishing your project.
Short and sweet
Respondents are more likely to complete surveys that require minimal time and effort. Without compromising your survey aims, make sure that every question you ask is important and relevant to your project. For maximum effect, keep the amount of questions under fifteen and think about how long each type of question will take to complete. A comment box will take longer to fill out than a single choice selection, for example.