Web-based survey software can be incredibly useful in easily collecting feedback and creating reports that help executives make decisions. However, the recent proliferation of online survey tools made available online has contributed to a problem that is becoming increasingly prevalent: businesses are using the software correctly per se, but they are not necessarily surveying in the correct manner. In a CFO Magazine article about enterprise feedback management, Susan Piotroski, brand and customer senior strategy executive for Accenture, stated, "The technology is easy, as is administering it. Asking the right questions is not."
This is so true for many of the clients that have come to us for help in creating measurable value with their survey results. The biggest problem, time and time again, is that online technology has made sending surveys such an easy process (type a question and a few answer choices then send), that people overlook the fact that survey writing is nearly a science in itself.
You'd be shocked at how much of a difference the smallest details make when conducting surveys. For example, failing to ensure proper wording (sometimes a single word!) of a question to avoid bias or leading can skew the results of a study and yield inaccurate data. Also, you want to ensure that the questions are presented in a manner that will result in usable and manageable survey feedback.
As a very simple example, imagine asking a demographic question about age. If you asked, "When were you born?" and left a one-line free response box, you could get a variety of answers such as, Dec. 10, 1973, or 1973, 12/10/73, 12.10.1973, or maybe even Winter of ’73. Try taking all those responses and tabulating useful data.
In future blog posts, we’ll offer more tips on how to ask questions in the right way. For now, a great way for people to get started with their surveys is to really leverage the question libraries Cvent provides in its tool. Our research team has selected nearly 200 of the most common survey questions across 25 survey genres to not only help you create surveys more efficiently, but even more importantly, to help you ensure that your surveys will yield non-biased, useful information for accurate decision making.
Finally, to get actionable insight, you have to ask the questions in the right manner, and you have to ask the questions that get to the core of the problem. In drafting questions, Piotroski says the surveyor "must understand the original problem that drove the need for the survey. If the right questions are asked, the answer to the problem is there." We’ll talk about using the questions in our library to help you get at business issues in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!
This is so true for many of the clients that have come to us for help in creating measurable value with their survey results. The biggest problem, time and time again, is that online technology has made sending surveys such an easy process (type a question and a few answer choices then send), that people overlook the fact that survey writing is nearly a science in itself.
You'd be shocked at how much of a difference the smallest details make when conducting surveys. For example, failing to ensure proper wording (sometimes a single word!) of a question to avoid bias or leading can skew the results of a study and yield inaccurate data. Also, you want to ensure that the questions are presented in a manner that will result in usable and manageable survey feedback.
As a very simple example, imagine asking a demographic question about age. If you asked, "When were you born?" and left a one-line free response box, you could get a variety of answers such as, Dec. 10, 1973, or 1973, 12/10/73, 12.10.1973, or maybe even Winter of ’73. Try taking all those responses and tabulating useful data.
In future blog posts, we’ll offer more tips on how to ask questions in the right way. For now, a great way for people to get started with their surveys is to really leverage the question libraries Cvent provides in its tool. Our research team has selected nearly 200 of the most common survey questions across 25 survey genres to not only help you create surveys more efficiently, but even more importantly, to help you ensure that your surveys will yield non-biased, useful information for accurate decision making.
Finally, to get actionable insight, you have to ask the questions in the right manner, and you have to ask the questions that get to the core of the problem. In drafting questions, Piotroski says the surveyor "must understand the original problem that drove the need for the survey. If the right questions are asked, the answer to the problem is there." We’ll talk about using the questions in our library to help you get at business issues in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!
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