Survey Design can partly be considered the procedure of constructing a survey with the goal of getting maximum insights from your study. This process includes use of an Online Survey Tool to design a survey from scratch by using ready-made survey design templates.
Steps to design an impressive market research survey
The most important part of designing a survey is to create questions that precisely measure behaviors and opinions of your respondents. Response rates will be of no use if the information collected is based on biased questions. Collecting good feedback requires good questions and a good survey design to organize those questions.
- Identify the objective
Before finalizing the survey design, the most important thing is to determine the objective of deploying a survey. Ask yourself what you want to cover in a survey and make sure the topic is clear. Once you obtain clarity on what the survey is going to be about, other steps will follow.
It is best to split your key objective into multiple unique points, such as: What type of demographic details do you want to capture? Will it be a macro or micro survey? What’s the target number of questions? What type of questions should be open ended? What other variables do you want to add to personalize your surveys?
- Add questions that are necessary
Now when your objective is clear, it is time for you to transform these key points into real survey questions. Believe it or not, it is rather easy to start diverging from the key objectives and boundaries you set once you start creating the survey within the survey software—given the amount of options that many platforms provide. However, it is important to stick to what you had decided in the beginning, unless you are absolutely sure that the objectives need adjusting to make an effective survey.
- Keep it short and crisp
Respondents may lose interest if a topic is not clear and tend to bounce to and from inconsistent points. Therefore, it is good to follow a logical order and stick to a specific topic. Also, make sure that the survey is not too lengthy as respondents might not stay interested in filling out the entire survey and the results might get compromised. Thus, it’s always best to keep it short and crisp.
- One question at a time
Asking multiple questions at a time can confuse respondents and they might not be able to choose the right options from the list of answers provided to them. Therefore, to give clarity to respondents, it is ideal to ask one question at a time.
- Avoid using technical words
If you want your respondents to respond to a survey, avoid using technical terms—at least those that your respondents would not understand; try using layperson language that is easy to understand by respondents. It will help them understand and respond to surveys in a more accurate way.
- Keep a balance between open and closed-ended questions
The trick here is to determine how to ensure balance between open-ended and closed-ended questions. Try to include illustrative and objective questions to balance a survey. Moreover, the type of question should be carefully categorized as it defines the importance of asking a question in the first place.
- Examine the responses
After sending the survey, leverage your survey software directly or an external statistical package, such as Excel, to capture all the responses. If using Excel, it should have all the mentioned categorizing of the survey to keep all the data organized. It is of utmost importance to have organized data so that predicting and analyzing the outcome(s) and writing reports will be as easy as possible for you.
- Summary report
After gathering the responses and analyzing them, consider sharing the analysis with your respondents through a summary report. All the gathered data should be in a particular format by this stage, so the respondents should get a clear picture of your goal(s) (i.e., what were you trying to achieve from the survey). Why share a summary report? Beyond killing curiosity, it also helps to boost future engagement in other surveys.
- Final action plan
Set your final action plan. Depending on your goal, put together responses and come to a conclusion. Afterwards, fix your final plan and start executing the changes.
Survey software can help you in the pre-testing of a survey to understand how respondents in particular groups may respond. It is a good practice as a surveyor can comprehend in the initial stage itself if any changes are required in a survey.
Are you looking for a best online survey tool?
You will be amazed to know how easy it is to design your own questionnaire according to the needs and requirements of your business using Ambivista’s Survey Insights Suite survey tool.
