Web Surveys 101

Yes, you must move your online survey into test mode before launching it. Okay - this isn't a mandatory system requirement if you use the Cvent Web Surveys software application. However, always moving your online questionnaire to test mode before launching, or publishing, it for data collection. I always suggest triple and quadrupedal checking the questionnaire yourself then having coworkers or outside people look over it. When you're looking over your online survey in test mode, here are a few things to check:

Spell Check - Check for grammar and spelling errors. It seems obviously, but you might be amazed the things that slip threw.

Questionnaire Flow - Are your questions ordered in a way that makes sense? Read more about question flow in this post.

Question Wording - Are your questions unbiased? Do you have any double barreled or leading questions in your survey? Make sure you don't use any terms that may not be understood by your respondents. In other words, avoid jargon.

Consistent Scales - Double check that all your scales are consistent particularly among related questions. Keeping a consistent scale makes it easier for respondents to answer questions. For example, if you always order questions 1-5 with 1 being the worst and 5 being the greatest, don't suddenly reverse the scale and make it a 7 point scale.

Required Questions - Do you require too many questions? Keep in mind some of these disadvantages of requiring questions. Are the questions that determine skip and branch paths required? If you're using any type of logic in your survey, you need to require the questions that are needed for the survey question logic to work correctly.

Skip Patterns - Are these working correctly? Make sure if someone says "No" they are not in college they do not see the survey question "Where do you go to college?"

Did you miss anything? This is a good time to think through your survey goals and ensure you didn't omit a question that you'll need when completing your chosen survey analysis techniques. This is certainly one of the places where having others look over the online questionnaire is really helpful.

After you make sure your survey is as close to perfect as you're going to get, and you've checked off the above items, go ahead and launch your survey and begin collecting responses. You will want to consider piloting your survey to a small sample of your actual invite list. It's recommended you don't send it to anymore than 10% of the complete list. If the responses make sense to you and are close to what you expected, go ahead and invite the other 90% of your survey sample to complete the survey.