Demographic Survey Example

Cvent offers a variety of Pre-Designed Survey Templates you can choose from for your first online web survey. These internet survey templates contain default questions, email, welcome and thank you text which you can utilize when designing a questionnaire. You can also choose from over 50 different graphical templates to suit the look and feel of your survey forms. Here’s a list of the different pre-created survey templates that you can use to build the base of your survey:


Besides this vast list of pre-designed questionnaires and graphical survey templates, Cvent also offers you a Question Library, which is filled with Customer Service, Demographics, Event, HR/Training, Marketing/Sales questions that you can utilize in your survey.

So! Go ahead and Sign up for an online web survey free trial account now and enjoy these á-la-carte features absolutely free.

Sometimes we get so excited about creating a survey we want to jump right in and ask the really interesting questions. Those typically consist of finding out about who our clients are, where they're located, etc. (factual questions). In other words, our demographic questions.

But if we don’t take the time to think about placement of these really important factual items within our surveys, we may be inadvertently affecting the results we see. By placing your demographic survey questions (name, gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.) close to the end of the survey feedback form as opposed to right at the beginning, you are increasing the chances that respondents will fill out these items, leading to richer data collection and more useful results. Respondents are more likely to feel invested in your survey, and will understand why you are asking those personal questions if those sensitive items are placed after survey questions that address the purpose of your survey.

Check out these blog posts to get started with your demographic survey questions.

Yesterday, I shared the first 5 tips from the Meetings & Convention article, Survey Science: How to craft more effective attendee evaluations. No one can deny the importance of measuring customer satisfaction, so why wouldn't you want to conduct a post-event survey to measure attendee satisfaction? Particularly if it's an annual conference, meeting or tradeshow. If you want attendees to keep coming to your events, you need to make sure you're gathering feedback on what worked well, what didn't, what should be included next year.

In continuing with the fifteen survey best practices shared in the article, here are the next five:

6. Be careful with demographic survey questions. This tip comes from our very own Eric Eden, VP of Marketing here at Cvent. Survey respondents don't always like to share all their demographic information on surveys. If you already have the information from registration, match it up later. Otherwise, if demographic information is a must for your survey analysis then make sure to put them at the end of the survey.

7. Ask intensity questions. You don't want to just ask yes-or-no questions. You want to know the degree with which the survey respondent agrees or disagrees with your statement. For example, don't ask if you should include public speaking skills at your next training conference, instead ask how valuable the attendees would find a session on public speaking. Asking these types of questions in the pre-event survey can help you prioritize the agenda. If you get a lot of weak interest for one session, you may want to include the session that got fewer, but more passionate, votes instead.

8. Offer a midpoint. As I've mentioned in the past, there are passionate arguments among market researchers about how many points should be on your scale. This article suggests going with an odd number scale because it has a true midpoint.

9. Questionnaire design should be balanced. This is another suggestion by Eric I fully agree with. Survey design is a definite skill. Some people try to write a lot of open-ended questions when they're working on designing survey questionnaires because they think they get better data. This is a mistake. You want to have a mix of close-ended questions (multiple select, single select, rank questions) and open-ended questions. The best surveys will include more closed-ended questions. They provide you with better data and are much easier when it comes to the survey data analysis.

10. Introduce the survey. We've gone over this many times. It's important to introduce your questionnaire. In the introduction you want to explain what the survey is about and why you're conducting it. By providing survey respondents with this information, you're likely to see a higher response rate. Introductions get "buy in" from the survey sample, they see that the data collection is important and are more likely to complete your survey.

Do you have anything to add to these conference and seminar survey tips? What questions have you asked in pre-conference surveys to  help you plan the event?

When designing survey quesitons, it's always important that you clearly define exactly what it is you are asking, especially when there is context given in the question itself.  Take the following sample survey question found in many demographic surveys:

This would be a perfectly acceptable question to ask in conversation, but for a written survey question, the problem lies in the fact that the question is asked first, and the definition is asked second.  Research shows that in self-administered surveys, respondents read the question, believe they've understood what is being asked, skip the context, and then answer the question.  Each respondent may have their own definition as to what jobs fall under the "Legal Professionals" umbrella, and if they are typically skipping the context of your question, you are left with inaccurate and unreliable survey data. 

Fortunately, the fix is an easy one: simply switch the order of information you are presenting, putting the context first, then ask the question.  Now that all of your survey respondents understand the context of the question, your data will be much more reliable, thus making your survey report all the more accurate.

There are three primary levels (or scales) of measurement for survey research questions.  Variables are commonly classified as either nominal, ordinal, or interval/ratio.  The three levels of measurement are outlined below.  Part two will describe the statistical analyses available for each type of variable, and tell you why certain tests are or are not appropriate for particular levels.

Nominal variables are categorical data items; they are groups that cannot be ranked or ordered.  They are usually words rather than numbers. Multiple choice survey questions are usually nominal.  Examples of nominal variables include yes/no questions, gender, ethnicity, geographical region, religious affiliation, and other types of non-ordered demographic survey questions.

Ordinal variables, like their name suggests, can be ordered or ranked.  Questions such as a survey rating scale (poor, fair, good, excellent) or level of agreement with a statement (strongly agree, somewhat agree, agree, disagree) used in attitude surveys are examples of ordinal variables.  The category has a natural order to it, but the distance between choices are not equivalent or standardized by set intervals.

Interval/ratio variables are measurable along equidistant intervals and are numerical in nature. "Interval" and "ratio"are actually two separate levels of  measurement, with the major difference being ratio variables have an absolute zero and are multiplicative.  However, interval/ratio scales are often referred to as a single category because ratio variables are rarely available and/or used in social and market research.  Examples of interval/ratio variables include years of age, income in dollars, temperature and percentages.

Survey reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool offer a wide variety of ways to view your data and begin conducting your market research survey analysis. The answer summary by question report, for example, pulls up a table, a graph and basic statistical analysis for each survey question. Another example survey report, answer details by respondent, offers you the option of seeing each respondent’s answers on a separate page or answer details for all respondents gives you the opportunity to see all the answers for all respondents on a single page!

But sometimes these are not enough when you want to make a professional report for your boss to present to the board members. This is exactly why Cvent has the presentations feature within the survey application. The presentations section allows you to create reports with unique combinations of filters and display options. You can use our presentations creator to access data views that are unavailable with other out-of-the-box survey reports. Creating distributable reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool makes it easy to communicate the survey results in either Word or PDF format.

To determine what you see on each page of your sample report, choose from the options below:

According to a new bank customer survey commissioned by the American Bankers Association, for the first time survey respondents said they prefer to bank online compared to other traditional banking methods. This is a major change. In a statement Nessa Feddis, ABA senior counsel and retail baking expert, gave to MediaPost.com she highlights how more customers prefer the speed and convenience of conducting their banking transactions on the internet... It also tells us that consumers now have the confidence in the accuracy and security of online banking.

The survey report broke out demographic survey questions and their correlation to preferred banking methods. In the past, the youngest consumers have been the ones pushing online banking. However, now bank customers under 55 prefer the online methods. Bank customers over 55 still prefer to visit their local branch or ATMs. The survey found that across all bank customers, online banking (25%) lead the pack followed by visiting branches (21%) and using ATMs (17%).

It's always good news when you see organizations making changes and adopting to changing customer attitudes and opinions - whether or not survey research accompanies the change. MediaPost points to Bank of America as a case study. BOA recently announced they would be closing 10% of their branches and increasing their online and mobile offerings. BOA was also the first financial institution to offer free bill-pay. Smaller, independent banks and credit unions aren't missing out on the trends found in these survey results. Several credit unions and local banks are encouraging customers to bank online as well.

This is an annual bank customer survey conducted by a third-party market research firm for the ABA. The survey sample was 1,000 customers and the survey was fielded in the middle of August.

Last week I explained the differences between branch logic and advanced logic when it comes to using Cvent's Web Survey software solution. What I didn't mention was our new link logic feature. This is probably my favorite of the new features we rolled out with our August Release. Here's how it works:

You're updating your training survey template and have always felt you needed separate sub-questions because you wanted to show different options based on which class someone took. If they took a professional development course on how to use excel versus a class on delivering effective sales pitches. Instead of having the same question twice with different options, you can now have a single question and tell the survey software which options to show based on a previous response.

Another good example of where you can use link logic is when you're asking demographic survey questions. If it's important to know which county someone lives in, you now have the ability to create one question and show only the counties that are applicable to the state selected.

Link logic is an addition to the advanced logic screen. It's very simple to set up. Here's a quick sample demographic survey question I set up with link logic: