How to Conduct a Survey?

The first step in conducting a survey is to determine “who” your target audience is. Once that has been established then the next step is to determine what your survey goals are. Based on this you should then start creating your survey questions. Sometimes surveys don't generate the right responses because the "right" questions were not asked. This unfortunately happens in a lot of surveys today.

If you are conducting a political based survey and your goal for example is to find out how American citizens feel about the new healthcare law, it is important to include people from all major political parties in your target audience. By doing this you will achieve two goals. First, you will be able to get a diverse response range, and second you will be able to identify specific trends. This might include a trend of republican citizens being more opposed to the new healthcare law, and a higher number of democrat citizens being in support of it.

When conducting this type of survey it is also very important to gather opinions from across the country. It has been proven time and time again that people living in the southwest and northeast for example often have different views and opinions about important economic and political issues.

If you are conducting a consumer based survey, you will probably get the best results if the survey is conducted in person. This will enable you to get more personal responses versus the responses you would get with an online or mail in survey. Since most consumer based surveys are designed to generate responses regarding a specific service or product, the questions on the survey should be very direct and targeted.

If you do decide to create a written survey, it is important to keep in mind that there needs to be extra space after each question so survey participants can write down any additional thoughts and comments. One of the things that often frustrates survey participants is that they are usually only given a "yes" or "no" response option. In most cases however the survey questions being asked typically call for a much more broader and defined response.

Finally, when conducting a survey you want to use a service that will make it easy for you to launch your survey template and also track your survey responses. Some of the well known survey services include Qualtrics and Survey Monkey. However there are also some lesser known and more affordable services out there as well, which are just as effective.

Having a well designed survey will help to increase participation and generate better results.