Conducting a survey may seem like a simple task, but if not done correctly, it can waste your time and money. It is important to keep so many things in mind while designing and conducting the survey.
Designing perfect custom surveys takes lots of efforts. There are a number of factors to keep in mind while you are designing a survey. These range from question composition, rating scales, number of questions, and more (please see one of our prior blog posts for tips on the topic).
Once you are done with designing your survey, it is imperative to test it. When it comes to testing the survey, you should ideally test it with laypeople. You can request the help of family members or friends, or within a professional context, those from other departments. By allowing others to complete the survey, you will get a better understanding of the survey quality.
Below are few tips that can help you to test the survey:
Notice the flow
When other people will fill the survey, check if they get stuck on any questions in particular. Chances are high that if you include a lot of industry-specific jargon, your respondents will find it difficult to fill the survey and will become stuck.
Notice the time
Check if the average person takes more than 15 minutes to complete the whole survey. If the survey is taking more than 15 minutes, the chances of survey attrition becomes quite higher.
Notice the result
You conduct surveys in order to get the most actionable results. There are chances that people haven’t filled the entire survey or may have skipped a few questions. Take note of these patterns as they may be suggestive of bigger issues. For example, poorly-worded items, illogical questions, or even technical glitches.
These are a few things that can help you to check the performance of your survey. If you want further help for testing of your survey, please get in touch with Ambivista as we, as a survey administration company, are experts in questionnaire design and testing