Survey Examples

One of the great things about Cvent Web Surveys software application is that it is constantly getting “better.” I, for one, am not aware of another survey software company that can state with confidence that 80% of all product enhancements come directly from the requests of current clients. Cvent, however, has certain processes in place so that every time a client expresses interest in seeing a new feature added to the online survey application, this request is quickly relayed to our technical team.

For those of you who were clients before our most recent product release in August 2009, you definitely noticed at least one big change in your account the first time you logged in after the release. As soon as you logged into your Cvent Web Surveys account, you saw that your surveys were no longer organized into folders on the Survey Selection page. Instead, they are now displayed in “views.”

Now, you may wonder why I chose to write my blog post this week on the transition from folders to survey views. It may seem like a pretty dry topic. I wanted to write on this particular survey subject because I get so many calls from clients asking how to create a new survey view that pull the appropriate surveys into view. If you have a lot of surveys created in your account, then this is a pretty important thing to know how to do, so that you don’t have to sort through all of your company’s surveys just to find the few that you are personally working on!

When you are ready to create a new survey view and filter the appropriate surveys into this view, you need to remember 3 simple steps:

1) Create a survey custom field. You can create survey custom fields under the Administration tab, on the same page that you create contact custom fields. Survey custom fields are primarily used to classify the surveys in your account and pull them into the appropriate views on the Survey Selection page. So, for example, if your marketing department and human resources department are running surveys, you may want to create 2 separate survey views, one for each department. The first step to do this would be to create a survey custom field for department.

2) Create a new view on the Survey Selection page. You can create a new survey view by choosing “add new view” from the Display drop-down menu. When you add the new view, you will need to name it and also specify certain options (i.e. whether you would like the view to be private or public). Finally, at the bottom of the page, you should apply an advanced filter based on the survey custom field you just created for department. For example, if you are adding the survey view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should choose “department” as the field, “equals” as the operator, and “marketing” as the value.


3) Now that you have created the survey custom field and added the new view, all you need to do is pull the appropriate surveys into the view you just created! When you added the new view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should have gotten a message, “no surveys match your criteria.” This is because you have not yet applied the survey custom field at the survey-level! To do this, simply go into an individual marketing survey, and click on  Settings on the top navigation bar. On the General Information page, you should click on the Custom Survey Fields tab. Here you can apply the “marketing” label to the individual survey, so that it will show up in the “Marketing Surveys” view.


Hopefully this post will be helpful to those of you who are struggling with the transition from folders to survey views. Believe me, survey views are completely customizable and will help you organize online surveys in your Cvent Web Surveys software account.

At minimum, two specific characteristics define a good list of response options for survey questions.  First, the categories (response options) must be mutually exclusive, which means they do not overlap with one another.  Second, survey response options must be collectively exhaustive, meaning they provide all possible options that could comprise a response list.  Let’s take a look at examples of common mistakes for each of these characteristics:


You can see while this response list is exhaustive, it does not provide mutually exclusive categories.  For example, if a survey respondent eats out three times per week, he or she could select either (b) or (c) as an accurate response.


In this survey question example, the response categories do not overlap, but they are not collectively exhaustive.  If a survey respondent make less than $10,000 annually, he or she does not have an option that can accurately capture his or her response.  This could be corrected for option (a) by applying the same response type as shown in (e), such as “$29,999 or less."

Perhaps you have an extra special research project that really needs a good response turnout, or you’re simply looking for ways to boost your response rates. Well, maybe its time to try sweetening the pot a little?

Studies have shown that surveys where potential participants were offered monetary incentives of as little as $1 received higher response rates then ones that didn't’t offer any incentives at all. In fact, offering any incentive to your potential survey respondents as a way of saying “Thank You” even before they take your survey is a great way to get started on the road to higher survey returns. Good examples of survey incentives that work are gift cards, checks, gift certificates, and of course good ol' fashioned cash.

The amount isn't as important as the belief by the participant that the offered incentive will actually be provided. Credibility is key. So if you choose to offer incentives to your potential respondents after they have participated in the survey (say for example the option to be entered into a random drawing for a chance to win an iPod) remember to follow through on giving out the reward after you collect feedback from all the survey respondents!

This tip is particularly useful when trying to avoid survey bias. By offering incentives you're more likely to attract people who would not normally participate in your surveys. Learn more about minimizing survey bias from some of our other posts.

I found an interesting poll today about colors preferred by men and women, and it provoked some questions about what are the best colors to use when you create polls or design survey questionnaires. Here's the breakdown from the poll shared in a Lyris Whitepaper:


Why does it matter? Because colors are also a form of non-verbal communication. So whether you're creating an online questionnaire to collect feedback or using an email survey tool to craft email marketing messages for survey invitations, you should care how colors affect those reading your email or completing your customer survey forms.

Colors can cause physical reactions. For example, too much red has been show to increase blood pressure. As you design survey templates, keep in mind how color meanings can affect survey respondents.

Cool colors: Cool colors typically have a calming effect. Keep in mind that cool colors can appear smaller than warm colors and visually recede on the page.

	Blue - As you might have guessed, blue is calming. Almost everyone likes some shade of blue, whether it's a strong and steadfast blue or a light, friendly blue. In fact, in 2008 Pantone selected Blue Iris as the color of the year. As a result of the calming effect blue has, it can make time seem to pass more quickly and help you sleep. However, too much blue can cause the calming effect to go to the extreme and cause you to have the blues. Beyond just being calming, blue can convey richness and sometimes superiority (deep royal blue) or it can convey trust and truthfulness (combining light and dark blue). See how using blues could improve your response rate if it helps people trust you?
	Green - Like blue, green has some calming effects and can make time seem like it's moving quicker, but it also signifies growth, renewal, health and the environment. Like with blue, green has it's own extreme as well, green can mean jealousy or envy and inexperience. With a hint of warmth and coolness, green can create balance, harmony and stability.
	Purple - Over the ages, purple has come to be synonymous with royalty. Since purple comes from red (warm) and blue (cool) it has intriguing qualities of both. Typically deep and bright purples suggest riches, while lighter purples are more romantic and delicate. Keep in mind though, while purple can be noble and spiritual, too much purple can cause moodiness - the same as with too much blue.
	Turquoise - As a blend of blue and green, turquoise can have a soft, feminine qualities or a more sophisticated feel with the darker teals.

Look for parts two and three later this week for warm and neutral color meanings.

When performing a market research study for clients in certain marketplaces, it is important to remember the competition. If, for example, you were doing a customer market research survey for a fast-food restaurant, Burger One, you would want to gauge survey respondents’ feelings about the competition as well as your client.

You might ask restaurant customer satisfaction questions like:


If respondents frequent Burger One and four other fast-food restaurants, that gives you insight into the survey data provided. If respondents only frequent Burger One, that is helpful to know as well. Take this example of how survey results can be applied to the restaurant's over all marketing strategy:


On the other side of this equation is what Burger One's loyal customer base thinks. If customers who only eat fast-food at Burger One express no interest in the new sandwich, it may not be the best possible sandwich to launch. However, if respondents who frequent competitors more often than Burger One express high levels of interest in the new sandwich, it could spell an opportunity for Burger One to gain new business.

It’s best to analyze market research from all angles when launching a new product – there are multiple factors at play.

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.

If you’ve ever looked at results from a public opinion survey or political poll, you’ve no doubt seen the margin or error noted alongside the findings.  Usually the note will read something like margin of error = plus or minus x%, CL 95%.

So what the heck does that mean?

Well, the first part basically tells you how close the results from your selected sample are compared to what you'd find if you surveyed the entire population.  The expression of “plus or minus x%” tells you that the percentages of given responses might be a bit higher or lower “in reality” (i.e., if you surveyed absolutely everyone).

Generalizability to the larger population is also described by an associated measure called a confidence level (CL). This term describes how confident you can be that your results are not due to chance alone.  A confidence level is normally set at either 90%, 95% or 99% (95% has become standard).

Let’s use an example to understand how these two concepts work:

A random sample of Americans were asked whether they preferred cake or ice cream for dessert.  The results showed that 60% preferred ice cream over cake, and 40% preferred cake over ice cream.  This question had a margin of error of +/- 3% at a 95% confidence level. What this means is that you can be 95% confident that the percentage of all Americans who prefer ice cream would fall between 57% and 63% (60 plus or minus 3).  Another way to put it would be as follows: if you conducted 100 surveys of the entire population, at least 95 times you would find that the percentage who preferred cake ranged from 37% to 43%.

Halloween is time for spooky movies, scary amounts of candy consumption and silly costumes. This holiday always ensures you'll see at least one person around the office dressed up - but what about when you do an annual Halloween costume contest? How do you poll the office to come to a fair consensus? Quickly create a web poll using your online poll creator. You wont need to worry about writing your own online poll script because the online poll software tool will take care of it for you.

Here at Cvent, we have an annual Halloween Costume Contest, as you might have guessed. In the past, we've used the clapping and cheering approach (who ever gets the most applause wins) and our web polling software. With the image gallery, it's easy to upload your costume pictures. When you're creating a poll online, you can customize the survey questions and add your own graphics and pictures, in addition to information about what the costume is of - because let's be honest, sometimes it's hard to tell. After uploading the pictures, you can quickly send a note to your employees letting them know it's time to VOTE!

When was the last time you ran a quick employee poll for a silly contest to lighten up the hum-drum of the day-to-day office life?

By the way, since I'm sure you're wondering, this year's Halloween Costume Contest winner was a Taco. Congratulations Andy, but why didn't you bring enough Taco for the rest of us?

Does your customer survey have "survivor bias"? I'm betting it does. Why? Because when most survey designers create business questionnaires or client satisfaction surveys we only collect feedback from individuals who are still customers. What about lost business? Why aren't those customers who left asked to complete your client feedback form? You better believe they have feedback.

In her post at the Dimensional Research blog, Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Avoid "Survivor Bias", Diane Hagglund defines "Survivor Bias" as drawing conclusions only from data that is available or convenient and thus systematically biasing your results. AKA biasing your survey sample by only asking "happy" customers. They may not be over the moon about your product, but they're at least happy enough with your offering if they're still paying you.

I agree with Diane on this one, it's pretty ridiculous to allow this bias to creep into your customer market research. It's easily avoided considering you should have all the customer data you need to send them the same client survey template. Make sure you're measuring client satisfaction among customers who left you for a competitor as well as those who simply decided not to renew the service (and didn't go with anyone else).

When you begin writing customer survey questions to create client questionnaires or update your annual template for a client satisfaction survey make sure you think about your former customers. If you don't know who they are, this is a good time to find out. Thank goodness for internet research software and customer insight solutions to make the act of surveying clients a little easier.

As market researchers, we are all aware of the many ways data can be gathered for a study. There is the online survey, telephone survey, in-person interview, direct mail questionnaire, email survey, focus groups and more.

Telephone surveys often yield decent response rates but can be difficult to conduct. A lot of people simply don’t want to be bothered on the phone and spend time answering poll questions. But phone surveys are great because you can ask all the questions and get clarification on any answers that don’t quite have the information you are looking for. The opportunity for that is of course not present in an online, email or direct mail survey.

A telephone survey is not going to work for every study, however. There are some products that won’t match up well. For example, a survey about a medical product is likely not one that anyone will want to discuss over the phone with a stranger.

For a consumer survey with a lot of feedback answers using numbered responses, an email questionnaire might be best as it could grow tedious and leave too much margin for error.

If it works, you can also combine survey methods and gather data both ways. When creating the surveys be sure to incorporate the differences into the call script and email. If it is necessary to have pre-screening questions for the phone interview, make them as concise as possible. Combining data collection methods is helpful and can achieve a more well-rounded result, but be careful about choosing the best method for your purposes.

There are literally dozens of ways respondents can misread and even misconstrue survey questions.  Some potential errors may be easily identified, while other errors can go unnoticed all the way up until data collection begins.  The possibility of a large number of respondents skipping the same questions, or customers providing invalid feedback because of faulty survey questionnaire design and implementation, are just two of the many reasons you should test-run a survey before sending out the real thing.  Conducting a pretest is the single best way to identify phrases subject to misinterpretations (and question design flaws in general).

Pretests (also referred to as pilot tests) are used to test the validity and reliability of individual survey questions, the entire questionnaire, and/or response scales.  While carrying out a pretest adds a step to your task list, the benefits of sending out a valid instrument far outweigh the costs of a pretest (which for online surveys usually means only extra time, not dollars).

To conduct a pretest, you first need to select a smaller survey sample that is still fairly representative of your target population.  You then have this pretest sample complete their surveys, while providing feedback about your questions, any technical concerns and other elements you feel could introduce bias or error into the process and subsequent results.  These respondents will no longer be eligible for actual survey participation since they will have been exposed to the questions ahead of time, but the process is well worth it.  The final step in the pretest is to analyze your results and decide how you should revise the survey to make it better and easier to complete.

One big caveat: make sure you use people unfamiliar with your research.  If you use colleagues or acquaintances who are knowledgeable about any relevant topics or technical issues, they may overlook correctable errors such as leading and loaded questions, faulty transitions and overly technical terminology.

By taking the extra step of conducting a pretest, you can gain valuable information from a small subset of people.  This will allow you to make the necessary and appropriate revisions, and in turn produce valid, reliable survey questionnaires for your formal survey research project.

When working with a client who has already built a strong customer base, market researchers are often called upon to create surveys to aid with customer retention programs.

Customer retention surveys are a bit different than a new product or service launch survey because the survey respondent sample must consist of product users. There are several things you need to ask this group so your client can formulate the best customer retention strategies, including:


The recommendation sample customer questionnaire question is important. Often, this can be a company’s bread-and-butter when it comes to retaining customers and gaining new ones. If a good amount of current customers would recommend the product to a friend, that speaks volumes about the quality.

It is also wise to include some open-ended questions. Find out why people use the product, and would continue to do so. If they wouldn’t recommend the product, or use it again, it is important to know why. Your client can use the information to persuade customers on the fence, and keep current customers coming back.

Before creating a poll online for your client survey, sit down and gauge initial opinions and move forward from there. If there were original product launch studies done, it may be helpful to revisit those results as well, just for comparison purposes. Approach the questionnaire research with care and the resulting data analysis will provide information to create customer retention techniques and marketing strategies.

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.

When was the last time you fretted over an email that looked perfect for some of the people in your audience, but seemed irrelevant for others? If you are a survey writer, it was probably not so long ago. It is an essential component of the planner’s job to create an email that would seem inviting to the audience; the hard part is deciding the emails' subject, body and sender so that the proposition is attractive to everyone. If you have been walking this tightrope, it is time to come down.

Multiple Email Campaigns is a Cvent email survey tool feature that gives you the ability to give everyone exactly what they want! Within one survey invitation email, you can send out different messages to different groups of people by segmenting your invitee list. This functionality allows you to specify the From Name, From Email Address, Subject Line and body of the email for each group or targeted list.

Let’s take an example, hosted an event and created an event survey to send out to the exhibitors and attendees; you’ve created separate questions for them and used survey question logic to decide who sees which conference survey template questions. Now, when it comes to the invitation email you realize the exhibitors need an email asking them to fill out the questionnaire asking about how much they gained from the event and why they would/would not want to return next year. On the other side, the attendees will prefer a warm note from the CEO thanking them for making the conference a success and inviting them to vote on which exhibitors/stalls they liked best or how they liked the food/accommodation. It is impossible for the two emails here to be the same; hence the need for multiple target lists.

Customize your email marketing to your audience and take advantage of this functionality in order to increase the open rate of your emails and your survey response rates.

I probably don't need to explain why creating employee surveys should be part of every HR department, but coming up with the correct employee evaluation template or employee job satisfaction survey questions isn't as as obvious as know you should do them. I recently came across a few sample workplace survey questions I thought may help when you start writing employee questionnaires:

One thing you should notice in the example employee satisfaction questions are they are different survey question types. A general online survey best practice to remember when crafting employee survey questions is to vary the question type. It helps keep the respondent engaged and lowers survey abandonment rate.

Increasing survey response rates is a major goal of most survey builders and market researchers. There's an art and a science to increasing campaign response rates whether it's an email marketing campaign or an online market research study. I wanted to share some of my tips for how to increase survey response rates:

• Make the email survey invitation from names easy to recognize. You can do this by including an individual's name within the organization that's well known (such as the CEO or if it's a client survey, the name of their sales rep). You can also use the organization's name, or both. For example, I'm subscribed to a few MarketingProf's newsletters. When they send out emails they include the same person's name and their organizations name so it looks like this: Anne, MarketingProfs. I recognize it everytime, and since I enjoy their newsletter, I made sure to open the email.

• Keep subject line's compelling, but short. The subject line and the From Name are the two most critical pieces to get your email opened. Try to keep your subject lines to 35 characters or less. You don't need to put the entire email in the subject line, but you do need to include enough information to make the recipients open the survey email.

• Create an attractive survey invitation. Studies have shown that well done HTML email messages get better response rates than plain text emails. With HTML you have the opportunity to include images, change font sizes, bold text, etc. Take advantage of this chance. It's one more way to get people to click through to your survey!

• Send personalized survey invitations. Personalizing your emails, even something as simple as including the recipient's name in the greeting, will return a higher response than a generic message. It creates a personal touch, and makes the recipient feel like someone took the time to send them a personal message (even though your email survey tool did it for you).

• Introduce the survey. Let the participants know why they should participate in your survey. If they don't understand why their opinion is important to your survey findings, why would they want to take the time to fill it out?

• How long will the survey take? Not setting expectations in the beginning for survey length leads to low response rates and high abandonment rates. Not what you want to see. If you don't let people know how long it will take to fill out your online survey, they're going to assume you're hiding something about how long it is. Tell them it will take X minutes or the survey is only Y questions long. Definitely be honest, if you lie here, you're going to hurt your future chances of getting those respondents to complete your next online survey questionnaire.

• Remind your survey sample that their responses will be kept confidential. This is particularly important for surveys about uncomfortable topics. For example, you created a poll for a public opinion survey to see how your population feels about an emotional topic such as abortion. If you don't keep the information confidential, you probably will not get honest feedback. Same thing goes with employee questionnaires, they should always be kept confidential and anonymous. Not keeping responses confidential will definitely hurt your response rate, as well as the validity of the data.

• Offer an incentive. Offering incentives is a proven method for increasing survey response rates. But this method doesn't work if you don't let people know about it up front. Put it in your email, put it on the welcome page of the survey, then make sure to follow up. Again, if you drop the ball here, the chances of that survey respondent completing your online survey form in the future is drastically reduced.

• Always say Thank You! Remember when your mom always made you write thank you notes when you got presents or cards from people for holidays and birthdays? It was because people like to feel their effort is noticed and appreciated. Same idea here, it's nice to just get a short note thanking them for their time. After all, survey respondents are doing you a favor.

• Don't over email your contact list. This is very important. You shouldn't be inviting the same people to complete your online surveys every month. It's important to segment your list using whichever survey sampling method that works best for your surveys to avoid email list fatigue. Make sure that you're coordinating with other campaigns as well. Just because you know they're different initiatives you're emailing about, your contact's wont necessarily see it that way. If you begin sending emails too frequently, contacts are going to just delete your email and never open it, opt out or report you as a spammer.

Have a tip that I missed? I'd love to hear it!

A good survey includes both qualitative and quantitative data, but when gathering qualitative data it is important to gather the right kind of answers. Go too open-ended with your question, and you may end up with answers that do not help you with your study at all.

Consumer insights into a new product or service are important to a market research study, and open-ended questions are the way to get them. When conducting consumer surveys, there are several online survey tips you can follow to get the right mix of closed and open-ended question:

1. Determine if it is a question that you cannot ask in any other way. For example, if you were asking consumers how often they purchased a product, it would be difficult to analyze data if that question were left open-ended. Group responses into categories like once a month, twice a month, more than three times a month.

2. If the question must be open-ended, make it narrow. Sounds contradictory, but if you ask too much, you’ll get too much. Don’t ask if they like your product and if they share it with friends in one breath. Ask simple questions like: Why do you purchase the product?

3. Allow expansion on closed-ended questions. If you are unsure about something, leave room for comments on close-ended questions. This is a good compromise that can help you get the responses you need.

These are just a few best practices for survey writing, but it goes without saying that when creating a survey, you need to put as much, if not more, effort into writing the questions as you will analyzing the data.

Cvent’s online survey tool is like a treasure trove.  Every day, there are new features to discover, new ways to utilize different functionalities and, of course, a never ending feeling of adventure as you navigate your way through.  With all the excitement, it is easy to overlook some features or get stuck in a routine where you use the same survey question types, same images, etc.  for every survey.  Regardless of the purpose or goal of the internet research survey, you will find a way to make those features you are comfortable with work.  But, come on now.  What kind of Customer Support would we be if we didn’t educate you on features that may be underutilized but have enormous potential to change the way you look at surveys forever?

Cvent offers 19 different question types; that is 19 unique ways to ask a question and 15 unique ways to collect a respondent’s rejoinder (single and multiple select questions have 3 different formats each).  My recent favorite, which I have seen in very few surveys (and there are only so many formatting ways to stress VERY), is the File Upload question.  This feature allows respondents to upload additional documentation which will be stored in one, central location.  Think about the possibilities:

1. With the amount of free and easily accessible information available on the internet, online tests have become increasingly difficult to administer.  What is to stop a student or anyone for that matter from "just having a peek" at Wikipedia or "accidentally" having a Google page up with the pertinent information?  A study done by Donald McCabe and Linda Trevino found that schools that had an enforced honor code have significantly less prevalence of cheating (McCabe, D.L. & L.K. Trevino, 1993). How can this be accomplished through an online survey?  Have respondents sign your school’s/organization’s honor code then use the File Upload question to have them upload that document. 

2. When I mentioned that Cvent’s web based survey tool can do anything; I meant it.  You can use the survey tool to identify and confirm respondents eligible for rebates offered on a purchase.  I know personally I get a little perturbed when I see that an item costs $X but, when I get to the register, I find out that it actually costs $Y but I can get the appropriate rebate in 4-6 weeks if I just mail my receipt to the company.  Call me impatient, call me lazy, but I don’t like having to go through all of that.  “But, Dorian, how can we do this differently?” you must be asking...  Two words: File. Upload.  Customers can upload the receipt from their purchase which will be stored within your Cvent account instantly.  If your survey is a collect contact information survey, you can ask for their address and the only step would be to verify the receipt/purchase and then send out that rebate.

3. Respondents can upload images or graphics; photos for a high school reunion, anyone?

The possibilities are endless.  Any additional documentation can be collected and you don’t need to overwhelm your inbox with email attachments for each respondent.  So go forth, I say!  See what other survey treasures you can find, Captain Sparrow.

Before you select a sample or design a single question, the first step in a survey research project is to establish your goals and objectives.  With proper planning, time and attention given to this step, all subsequent steps will flow more smoothly. 

Ask yourself--and answer, in writing--broad questions such as the ones below, and then you can drill down into more specific research questions and move on to procedural matters.

What information am I seeking to gather?  Why do I need it?  What is the “end game” regarding what I’m trying to learn?

Who (exactly) can I get this information from?  How can I contact them?  How many people do I need to contact, and do I have an exhaustive list?  Am I interested in any particular subgroups?

Has anyone else done a similar project in the past?  If so, what did they find out and how could what they did help with my current project?

What kind of data and results do I want my questions to produce?  Am I interested in public opinion, actual behaviors, satisfaction levels, employee feedback/workplace surveys, etc.?  How will I go about collecting and analyzing the data?

How will my results be reported?   What will the report format look like, and who will receive the results?  What kind of summary data do I need, and how can I design questions with response options that will provide me with actionable data?

Establishing clear, attainable objectives and goals is of the utmost importance when undertaking a research study.  Your results will likely only be as clear as your objectives, for better or worse!

Here at Cvent, we get asked for survey templates all the time. That's why we've created a bank of survey questions and pre-created questionnaires for all clients to utilize within their account. But it never seems to be enough. Sample employee motivation surveys, employee evaluation survey examples, sample employee questionnaire, employee satisfaction survey templates, the list goes on, and on, and on...

While this post may not give you all the answers or the complete employee survey template you're looking for, it definitely is a start. Below are some sample survey questions for employee questionnaires.


While not all of these questions are necessary (or appropriate) in any given employee engagement survey or job satisfaction questionnaire, you should see how some of them will fit into your next employee satisfaction survey template.