Survey writing is no easy task. Without having experience or expertise in designing questions, you may not get truly objective and reliable results. Specific words used or not used in questions can bias the data in a positive or negative direction. It is important to do your research before crafting a survey. More importantly, consider using a market research firm to assist with your survey creation, question design, and other key tasks.
Consider emailing or talking with a market research firm to understand more about survey writing tips and survey design so your questionnaire will be a success.
Tip 1: Put Yourself in the Shoes of Your Participants
The perspective that always matters when writing a survey is the respondents' perspective. How will they interpret a question? How long will it take to complete the survey? Are all of the answer categories offered in the survey? These are all questions you should be asking yourself as the survey taker.
When designing your survey keep the respondent top-of-mind. This will help guide you with language, length, and question topics. When testing your survey, assume the role as the "most confused respondent ever". This will help you put yourself in a mindset to make sure every word, question, and answer category is clearly defined and easily understandable for all.
Tip 2: Ask Questions You Can Take Action With
Go through each and every question in your survey and ask yourself "what can I do with these results?" This helps centralize your script on actionable questions. Our market research asks "what, so what, and now what" on each question. This helps us understand why we are asking the question, what the results might look like, and what can be done with the results.
The survey should center around your objectives on the market research. Asking questions that cannot be put to use or carry no meaning are worthless in a survey. Think about gender for a moment. Unless you are going to craft specific marketing campaigns separately for males and females is it worth asking in your survey? If not, can this question be replaced with something more important.
Tip 3: Include the Difficult Questions
Surveys are not all unicorns and rainbows. You should ask the more challenging questions. What do customers dislike about your service? What can be improved about your product? Not including these questions cheats your organization from receiving some extremely valuable feedback to help with strategy and operations.
The goal of market research is to obtain a realistic view of your target audience. This includes both positive and negative feedback. If your survey solely focuses on the positive you'll be missing the other half of the puzzle.
Contact Our Market Research Firm
Drive Research is a market research firm located in Syracuse, NY. Our market research specializes in services such as Voice of Customer (VoC), Customer Experience (CX), and Voice of Employee (VoE). To learn more visit our market research services page.
Questions about our next market research project? Contact us at [email protected] or call us at 315-303-2040. You can also message us on our website here.