If you follow the bloggers on the Cvent Web Survey blog, you know we emphasize survey reporting concerns throughout the entire questionnaire project life-cycle. This post outlines five general sections that comprise a good report or presentation for a survey research project. By following this outline, you can be sure that you have a thorough summary of your research objectives, processes and results all in one place at the conclusion of your survey project.
Executive Summary
This is the "drive-by" version of the entire survey project. It contains a brief summary of your main points, and predominately consists of broad research findings. You can also think of this as the audience takeaway section: imagine if people had just five minutes to hear your results, and then had to make decisions based upon what they heard. Include essential, bottom-line insights from your survey project here (and not much else).
Introduction/Background
In this section, you introduce your study, including its purpose, concepts, rationale and variable descriptions (where appropriate). This is also the place to provide all the background information, as well as any prior research findings/citations upon which your current study is based. If you have specific hypotheses, they can be placed here after you’ve established rationale.
Methodology
This is the part of the report where you get dirty with the details of how you went about designing and conducting your survey. Descriptions of survey sampling procedures, survey question and response option/scale design, data collection activities and timelines all belong here.
Results
In the survey results section of your report or presentation, you provide all the survey findings. This includes detailed tables, charts and other selected graphics that clearly explain what the data say, and can be quite extensive depending on how many survey questions (and research questions) you have.
Conclusion/Discussion/Recommendations
These sections can of course be listed separately, but I’ll group them together here for our general descriptive purposes. This is where you take the step from findings to decisions. You’ve detailed your results; now you draw conclusions, discuss anything that might have affected the research or your path forward, and make recommendations about where to go next based on the data.
Executive Summary
This is the "drive-by" version of the entire survey project. It contains a brief summary of your main points, and predominately consists of broad research findings. You can also think of this as the audience takeaway section: imagine if people had just five minutes to hear your results, and then had to make decisions based upon what they heard. Include essential, bottom-line insights from your survey project here (and not much else).
Introduction/Background
In this section, you introduce your study, including its purpose, concepts, rationale and variable descriptions (where appropriate). This is also the place to provide all the background information, as well as any prior research findings/citations upon which your current study is based. If you have specific hypotheses, they can be placed here after you’ve established rationale.
Methodology
This is the part of the report where you get dirty with the details of how you went about designing and conducting your survey. Descriptions of survey sampling procedures, survey question and response option/scale design, data collection activities and timelines all belong here.
Results
In the survey results section of your report or presentation, you provide all the survey findings. This includes detailed tables, charts and other selected graphics that clearly explain what the data say, and can be quite extensive depending on how many survey questions (and research questions) you have.
Conclusion/Discussion/Recommendations
These sections can of course be listed separately, but I’ll group them together here for our general descriptive purposes. This is where you take the step from findings to decisions. You’ve detailed your results; now you draw conclusions, discuss anything that might have affected the research or your path forward, and make recommendations about where to go next based on the data.
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