Good methodology includes writing questions well, selecting and inviting respondents properly, and having a standardized, easy survey-taking experience for respondents. We strive to help you at each of these steps, with help available on respondent selection, writing effective questions, and a list of specific features that SuperSurvey offers to enhance your survey's methodology.
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However, most survey makers find that the populations they are interested in do use the Web. For instance, surveys of executives, high-income consumers, corporate purchasers, college students, technology businesses, and of course, computer owners, are all well-suited to the Web, because these groups are likely to use the Web.
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Most business and professional users have a good idea about who they want to question. Ideally, survey makers can use SuperSurvey to selectively target those people. For example, you can solicit responses directly from your customers, website users, or employees.
Some Web survey services charge outrageous fees to provide "survey pools" who give "valid" answers. This is a very suspect claim, because the "professional" survey respondents that make up these pools are usually not similar to your populations of interest. In fact, survey pool members are mostly concerned with getting through as many surveys as possible in order to get their rewards -- not with honestly answering questions.
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In general, a question should be stated as simply and clearly as possible. Also, while you want to keep your questions short and sweet, you also want everyone who reads the question to understand it the same way.
For example, a question like "If the Presidential election were today, who would you vote for?" is better than "Who would you choose?", because the latter could have different meanings (who would you choose to sit next to, who would you choose to impeach, etc.). At the same time, "Assuming the Presidential election were to be held today, for whom would you cast your ballot?" is too long and wordy.
Beware of using loaded words that may influence your respondent's choices. For example, "How much do you like liver-and-onions flavor ice cream?" is a better question than "How disgusted are you by the revolting taste of liver-and-onions ice cream?" Finally, be consistent -- if you ask a question about Fords, you should ask the question about Chevrolets in the same way.
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If you want to rank a large number of choices (i.e., rating your opinions from 1 to 5 on different soda flavors), a matrix question may be right for you. Matrix questions also allow for easy comparisons and analysis of the data.
Free-response questions are invaluable for gaining feedback in a respondent's own words, but are difficult to analyze.
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Studies show that people are more likely to give you fully completed surveys if there is a "none of the above" or "no opinion" choice on multiple-choice questions. Also, your data are more likely to give an accurate picture of the situation that way (e.g., if you give only two choices in a political poll, you could get misleading responses from third-party respondents).
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These conditions, known as skip logic, can be very helpful if you have a long or complex survey, in order to reduce the amount of work each survey taker must do and therefore increase response rates. However, if you do not require skip logic, you can still use LOGIQ™ to map out the order of your questions.
Why use LOGIQ™ conditions to determine survey flow? After all, consistency in survey administration is the key to good results, and "skip to" conditions change the survey experience, right?
Yes -- and No.
"Skip to" conditions do change the survey experience among different takers. But such differences in experience are sometimes unimportant compared to the benefits derived from using "skip to" LOGIQ™. For example, in very long surveys, forcing survey takers to wade through long, irrelevant sections that don't apply to them can have two bad effects: it can cause people to quit taking the survey (nonresponse) and it can cause people to start entering bad data to get through quickly or to answer questions that don't apply to them (quality).
LOGIQ™ is provided primarily as a service to customers doing high-end survey projects, where "skip to" conditions are part of the protocol. But if you're creating a long survey (more than 10 minutes per completion), or if you're creating a survey which has lots of questions that apply only to certain respondents, you should consider using LOGIQ™ to improve your survey's experience and your data.
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However, if your survey scrolls down a page with many questions, you should consider breaking it up into a number of short, manageable pages. We offer the option of a "percent completed" indicator, which has been shown in scientific studies to increase the willingness of respondents to complete a multi-page survey.
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However, if you are surveying not just a sample, but most or all of your population of interest, you don't need to worry as much. For example, if you are surveying all your employees to learn about employee satisfaction, you automatically have an excellent sample.
An issue that is often present is response/non-response bias. If some people aren't taking a survey, is it because they are different in some important way from the people who do respond? To help address this concern, surveys with Auto-Generated keys permit tracking and follow-up of non-respondents, in order to help minimize the bias.
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Statistical significance of results, while important for determining if a scientific survey deserves publication, is usually not a critical concern for business surveys. If your survey need is rigorous in this aspect, however, SuperSurvey offers an excellent platform upon which to seek significant results.
If you have need of a statistically rigorous survey project, and you require highly skilled consulting knowledge, SuperSurvey can refer you to a statistically trained professional who can provide guidance for a fee. Contact us at service@supersurvey.com.
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Salant, Pricilla and Don A. Dillman. How to Conduct Your Own Survey. John Wiley and Sons, 1994. This is a good general introduction to the idea of surveying for research, although it does not treat more recent issues of Internet surveying.
Sudman, Seymour and Norman M. Bradburn. Asking Questions. Jossey-Bass, 1982.
Although this book is older, it remains the gold standard for question design, including numerous examples and checklists to help design good questions.
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