1. Designing Effective Surveys
Monday, 30 July 2018
Starter: Read through the sheet-highlight what you think the key points will be for your research/survey

2. Your survey should…. Give your questionnaire a topic-related title
Include a brief explanation of the survey’s purpose (short paragraph)
Include instructions for completing the survey
Include instructions for returning the survey
Assure respondents the survey is anonymous
Tell participants they will be given a debrief of the findings and their data will be kept anonymous

3. Questionnaire Title & Purpose
Give your questionnaire a topic-related title
Include a brief explanation of the survey’s purpose (short paragraph)
Include instructions for completing the survey
Include instructions for returning the survey
Assure respondents the survey is anonymous
Make the rationale clear. Make the respondents feel their answers matter. Engage them. Help them see how they (respondents) will benefit from your findings. Offer an incentive such as a copy of your final report.

4. Conceptualizing Your Research
Conceptualize your primary research; Figure out what you need to know
If you need information on the opinions or actions of a whole group, do a survey
Identify key elements of the concepts you need information about
While an interview enables you to gather information from one person, a survey enables you to gather information from groups of people. On the job, surveys are almost always used as the basis for practical decision-making. Manufacturers survey consumers when deciding how to market a new product, and employers survey employees when deciding how to modify personnel policies or benefit packages. In many situations, you will be bale to conduct surveys that provide a solid basis for on-the-job decision-making if you follow the suggestions given in this presentation.

5. Your Survey Population
Carefully choose and define your survey population
At work, writers sometimes present their survey questions to every person who belongs to the group whose attitudes or practices they want to learn about. For example, an employee assigned to learn what others in her company feel about a proposed change in health care benefits or a switch to flextime scheduling might send a questionnaire to every employee. However, surveys are often designed to permit the writers to generalize about a large group of people (called a population) by surveying only a small portion of the individuals in the group (called a sample.) The ensure that the sample is truly representative of the population, you must select the sample carefully.
To sum up, then you will survey a sample group that represents the larger population affected by the problem you are researching – your survey population. You will be making generalizations about this group – you will apply these generalizations to the entire survey population. Be sure to clearly define your population: “IUPUI psychology students” or “warehouse workers at Miller Tires.”

6. The Survey Population Are they relevant to the problem?
Are they the group affected by the problem?
Or are they people who have dealt successfully with this problem elsewhere?
Can you get a fair sampling? How?
Will you get a high response rate?

7. Who is your target audience?
What is it you actually want to find out?
Who is your audience?

8. Operationalize Your Concept
Consider your audience’s needs (your survey respondents as well as target audience)
Decide how to measure your concept by using reliable, valid questions
Draft closed-end questions
Research is valid when it measures what you want it to measure. Make sure you know what you want to measure.
Research is reliable when its results are consistent, meaning all the respondents interpret questions in the same way.

9. Survey questions should be easy to understand and hard to misinterpret!

10. Writing Good Questions
Use common language & clearly defined terms
Use mostly closed questions
Include demographic questions to help identify the sample
Use precise, unambiguous language
Make sure questions are valid & reliable

11. Which Is the Valid Question?
How much do you like doughnuts?
How many times a month would you visit a doughnut shop located within three blocks of campus?
A valid question is one that produces the information you are seeking. For example, suppose you are studying the feasibility of opening a donut shop next to a college campus. You must find out if there would be enough business to make the shop profitable. To determine how much business the doughnut shop might attract, you could ask either of these two questions:
How much do you like donuts?
How many times a month would you visit a doughnut shop located within three blocks of campus?
A valid question is one that produces the information you are seeking. For example, to determine how much business the doughnut shop might attract, you could ask either of these two questions.
The first question is invalid because the fact that students like donuts does not necessarily mean they would patronize a donut shop. The 2nd question is valid because it can help you estimate how many customers the shop would have.

12. Is This a Reliable Question?
Do you like high quality pastries?
Different respondents might interpret the term “high quality” in different ways. Plus, how many people would say no, they prefer low quality pastries?

13. What to Avoid Avoid double-barreled questions
Avoid leading, biased questions
Avoid loaded questions
Avoid repetitive questions
Avoid personal questions
Double-barreled asks two questions in one: What can our city police force do about getting drugs off the street and ridding the force of corrupt officers? Don’t ask two questions in one .
Leading or biased questions seem to guide your respondents to give a particular response. You don’t want to influence respondents with loaded questions that advocate a particular viewpoint or bias. Examples:
Wouldn’t it be good to have a coffee shop near campus? (biased)
How much you would like to have a coffee shop near campus? (unbiased)
A loaded questions contains words that carry built-in judgments, like “foreigner”
Ex. Is foreign aid spent on foreigners a waste of taxpayer’s money?

14. Gathering Demographic Information
Do you expect age or gender to play a role in people’s opinions?
Do you expect education level or income level to play a role?
Do you expect size of household or length of employment to play a role?
Do you want to compare responses from different groups?

15. Sequencing your Questions
Group questions that are similar
Put them in a logical order
Place demographic questions at the beginning
Put any sensitive or difficult questions at the end
Put any open-ended questions at the end
Any questions you think the respondents will find difficult or unpleasant should be put in the questionnaire after questions that are easier and less threatening. At least one open-ended question is useful to cover anything you may have overlooked. You want to invite additional comments because they can be a great source of information. You can also ask a specific open-ended question and also leave a space for comments.

16. Types of Questionnaire Questions

17. Yes/No
Are you currently employed? ___ yes ___ no

18. True-false
Your store is located downtown. ___ True ___ false

19. Multiple Choice
What precautions does your store take to curtail shoplifting? ___ Sensormatic tags ___ Ink dye tags ___ Employees circulating on the floor ___ Dressing room attendants on duty ___ Surveillance cameras

20. Agree/disagree Scale
Drug use is a problem among our employees. ___ Strongly agree ___ Agree ___ No opinion ___ Disagree ___ Strongly disagree

21. Ranking
How much of your household’s shopping and recreation occurs downtown? ___ Little or none ___ Less than half ___ About half ___ More than half ___ Most or all

22. Rating
Rate the following factors according to their influence on you when you bought your home? (5 = very important and 1 = unimportant) ___ Commuting time ___ The home itself ___ Purchase price and financing ___ Proximity to friends and family ___ Schools

23. Checklist
From what sources did you finance your business? Check all that apply. ___ Bank ___ Savings and loan institution ___ Personal savings ___ Federal or state government loan ___ Other ________________________

24. Formulating Response Categories
Limit types of questions and response sets to no more than three
Give clear-cut answer choices
Make response sets easy to navigate
Make sure response categories don’t overlap
Make sure responses cover all possibilities
Structure questions so that responses can be tabulated easily, validly, and reliable.

25. Overlapping Response Categories
Example: How many credit hours have you completed at IUPUI? ___ 1 – 25 ___ 25 – 55 ___ 55 –85 ___ 85 or more

26. Revising Your Questionnaire
Have you asked everything you want answers to ?
Will the answers help you make recommendations?
Are your questions unbiased, clear, and to the point?
Are they logically arranged?
Is the questionnaire neat & uncluttered?
Is it carefully edited?
Can respondents complete it quickly & without difficulty?
Be sure that the questionnaire is carefully edited, neatly formatted, and shows you are very professional and serious about conducting this research. (Give ex. About student who put “very continent to incontinent” range on his survey)

27. Ways to Conduct Your Survey
Surveymonkey/Google forms
Leave a box in a break room or other common area
Send as an attachment to each respondent
Conduct by telephone

28. Now……. Make your own Questionnaire/Survey
Remember what we learnt about the type of questions!