Here’s How to Conduct Surveys Like a Pro
Meet Jonathan. He is a part of Ruangguru’s Consumer Research division. Jonathan joined Ruangguru through a program called Management Associate Program (MAP), a rigorous, leadership accelerated program where once selected, you are tasked with a new project. Jonathan was placed under the product team where he focuses on consumer research.
On a daily basis, he sends out monthly and ad-hoc surveys to students, parents, employees, and others. As a person who deals with surveys on a daily basis, there are a few tricks that Jonathan has learned and would like to share with you.
So, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to create a survey, follow these tips from Jonathan!
Set the Objectives
The first step, which you can say is quite crucial and can make or break your survey, is setting the survey’s objective. Jonathan shares that the objective of the survey is the core of it. This means it is important to consider the following questions when discussing your survey objectives with your team or stakeholders:
- What insights do you want to discover?
- Who are the audiences?
- After the data is obtained, what can it be used for?
You might want to pay extra attention to this step: when creating the concept, the questions themselves and scale will all go back to the objectives. A “good” objective according to Jonathan is one that closely follows the main purpose of the survey and the outcome.
Design the right questions
After setting a concrete objective, you can start to design the questions. This is also another important step because the questions you ask determine the results you’ll get.
If you don’t ask the right questions, you may not be able to fulfill your main objectives.
Jonathan suggests that you put yourself in your targeted audience’s shoes, and ask these questions:
- Will they be able to understand the question I am asking?
- Do I think this question will make them feel biased or confused?
Ultimately, questions should be neutral.
When designing questions, try to make the audience feel comfortable. Just like having a conversation with someone, you can start with introductions before then stating your questions for the survey.
Most importantly, be sure to thoroughly check your questions and ensure you have all you need. Once you send out your survey, you can’t ask followup questions.
Quality Control
In Ruangguru, Jonathan admits that he has sent out tons of surveys. This equips Jonathan with the knowledge when survey participants try to cheat the system. Incentives used to motivate participants in conducting a survey are common. Based on Jonathan’s experience, some people try to complete a survey more than once, specifically for the incentives. How do you prevent this? Jonathan has a couple of solutions.
- Make sure to limit your surveys to one response only. This prevents a person from answering your survey more than once. Even so, this method may not always work because a person can easily use a different email address or phone number.
- Put in an inattentive question in your surveys. Jonathan does this to differentiate a participant who is truly invested in answering the survey questions as truthfully as possible.
- Flag the speedsters in your survey. Speedsters are the people who only click next without thinking.
Data analysis and reporting
After you collect all the answers from your participants, don’t forget to clean your data to prevent errors in the results. Keep your eyes peeled for double entries or answers that are flagged, and make sure to delete this off your database.
Now it’s time to present your data!
Jonathan and his team usually present his data in a deck, and he needs to pay close attention to the way he presents them. Here are a few presentation tips from Jonathan:
- Be specific with your data
- Choose the right chart for the right function/data
- Always include the survey questions in every slide to show how the data was obtained
- Write titles that clearly state the data’s intentions
- Maintain visual consistency, like fonts, colors, and sizes
Hopefully, this article can be your go-to reference when you need to create a survey for work or even your personal needs. If we missed anything, be sure to share your own survey tips in the comments below!
If you have made it this far into the article, hopefully, this means that you are passionate about conducting surveys. Join the Product and Operations team in Ruangguru by clicking this link to use your powers for good.
