Banked vacation days, warm weather, the lure of the open road—as the summer sun intensifies, so does our collective appetite for adventure and discovery. Many will pack their bags, load up the car and embark on a vacation. But before you take to the highway, take a few cues from the traditional summer road trip and apply them to your survey program.
In order to design effective surveys that garner high responses rates, both in terms of quality and quantity, approach your survey like a summer road trip. Instead of a destination, you’re trying to reach important, actionable conclusions. And the passengers in the backseat of this voyage? None other than your survey participants. Now that the stage is set, here are the rules of the road that will lead you to more successful surveys:
- Know your destination– Similar to road trips, you need to have an end goal in mind before you can get started crafting your survey. Once you determine what you want to achieve, you can plot a strategy to get there. Without proper direction and purpose, both your road trip and your survey are doomed. To avoid this, when you set out to design your survey, ask yourself two critical questions:
- What do you want to accomplish with the survey?
- What information do you need to know to accomplish your goal?
For example, if the purpose of your survey is to increase customer satisfaction, you can work backwards from there. Begin identifying what data points you need to collect from your customers to support your overall survey goal. In this case, you want to determine what affects current customer satisfaction levels. Start drafting broad questions like, “how would you rate our service?” and then drill down into more detailed questions that illuminate why your customers feel the way they do.
- Take a logical route– If your vacation spot is east of your starting point, it doesn’t make sense to hop in the car and head west. Backtracking, following dead-end roads and meandering in the wrong direction can potentially ruin a road trip—and the same goes for your surveys. Avoid confusing or agitating your survey participants by using web survey technology with advanced logic capabilities. Survey logic allows you to send participants down different paths based on their previous answers, so they aren’t forced to answer repetitive questions or ones that don’t pertain to them. This also helps you get more specific and relevant data from the appropriate participants.
- Be courteous to your passengers – If the summer road trip is a national pastime, than the infamous “are we there yet?” inquiry is its rallying cry. No one enjoys being trapped in the backseat of a car without an estimated time of arrival—it’s a recipe for road trip fatigue and general crankiness. When it comes to surveys, treat your participants like you would your passengers, and keep them in the loop by giving a brief introduction to your survey and some insight into why you are interested in their responses. Include how long the survey should take your participants, so they can allot the proper amount of time to complete it. Even if your survey is on the longer side, participants are more likely to finish it and provide accurate responses when they know what to expect. Sophisticated web survey technology even allows you to provide a progress bar in the survey, so participants can see how far along they are.
It’s easy to get excited about your survey and forget about the design logistics that dramatically affect its success rate. Just remember that you’re not the only one on your survey journey. Draw some inspiration from a well-planned road trip, and make your next survey an easy and enjoyable experience for your participants, too.