Overview
You don't need to be an expert to create an effective survey. By following a few survey best practices you can make sure you're collecting the best data possible.
Best Practices
Define a clear, attainable goal for your survey.
Figure out the goal of the survey. The purpose should be a clear, attainable, and relevant goal.
Maybe you want to understand customer satisfaction. If so, the goal of your survey could be: "I want to understand how customer satisfaction is influenced by customer service and support, including through email, online, phone, and in-person channels."
The idea is to develop a specific, measurable, and relevant goal for the survey. This provides guidelines for developing questions tailored to capture the data needed to compare against the stated goal.
Define the process for reviewing responses.
Figure out the process for reviewing the responses. You shouldn't collect feedback unless you know how the feedback will be used.
Keep the survey short.
In most cases respondents are doing you a favor by taking your survey. What better way to respect their time than by not taking up too much of it? You'll end up with more thoughtful responses, and higher completion rate. Respondents are less likely to complete long surveys, or ones where questions appear to haphazardly hope from topic to topic. Make sure the questions follows a logic order, and the survey can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
Make every question count.
Ensure each question adds value and provides supporting data directly related to the survey's stated goal. If the question isn't relevant (e.g. asking a person's home state on a customer satisfaction survey) skip it saving respondents, and yourself, time.
Focus on using closed-ended questions.
Closed-ended questions, or response scales, are multiple choice or checkbox questions. These questions are easier for respondents to answer, and provides quantitative data to use in analysis.
Open-ended questions ask the respondent for feedback in their own words. These types of questions can take much longer to answer, and provide a more subjective viewpoint. Try to include only 1-2 open-ended questions towards the end of your survey.
Don't ask leading, or biased questions.
Avoid putting your own opinion into the question prompt. Doing so can influence the responses in a way that doesn't reflect a person's true experiences.
Provide Balanced Answers
When asking multiple choice questions, avoid answer choices that lean a certain way to avoid respondents providing inauthentic feedback.
For example, if the question prompt is "How satisfied are you with the support you received?"
A set of unbalanced answer choices could look like the following:
- Very helpful
- Helpful
- Neither helpful nor unhelpful
Whereas, a balanced set of answer choices could look like the following:
- Very helpful
- Helpful
- Neither helpful nor unhelpful
- Unhelpful
- Very unhelpful
Avoid multicomponent questions.
A multicomponent question is where you ask for feedback on two, or more, separate things within a single question.
For example: "How would you rate the quality of our product and support?"
If the respondent has two different thoughts with regards to the product vs the support, they may address the element they're least happy with. Alternatively, they may skip the question, or leave the survey altogether.
This can be fixed by separating the discrete components into their own questions.
Consider letting respondents know what will be done with their responses.
Respondents may be more inclined to provide open feedback if they understand the purpose of the survey, as well as who will be able to see their responses. Consider adding an Introduction Message under the survey's General Options.
Test drive the survey.
However short, or straightforward, the survey is, it's always a good idea to pre-test the survey before you enable it so you can catch any possible errors. Share your survey with at least five people, so that they can test your survey to help you catch and correct problems before actively using it.
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