Research & Statistics

Designing your Survey

Introduction

Creating
a Survey

Collecting
Customer
Feedback

Best
Practice
Examples
Link

Useful
Contacts

When designing a survey it is important to consider the following elements:

Purpose
You need to understand what you are hoping to get from your survey before designing it as the type of question that you ask will be linked to this.

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Type of question
Open questions will provide you with qualitative information, which although interesting to you is more difficult to analyse. (Example Open Question – Which aspect of the service could we have improved?)  

Closed questions will provide you with quantitative information which can be easily analysed and used to produce improvement targets.(Example Closed Question – Was everything ok?).  

Often a combination of both types of question works best.

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Question Wording
It is important that questions are easy to understand and do not confuse the respondent.  You also have to ensure that you are not leading the respondent.  

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Scales
If you are choosing to measure closed questions against a scale you must ensure that the scale is balanced (i.e. that it has as many negative options as positive options), if you wish to collect accurate data.  For example a four point scale may take on the following form –

Very satisfied

Satisfied

Dissatisfied

Very dissatisfied

You may also include a neutral option, however there is the danger that respondents will simply select the neutral option and provide you with no really useful information.

A scale including a neutral option would look like this:

Very satisfied

Satisfied

Neither satisfied
nor dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Very dissatisfied

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Layout and Presentation
Surveys should be clearly laid out and follow a logical order, following the normal flow of a guest’s experience so that they are easy to complete.

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