In previous posts we talked about the aspects you should consider to create online surveys that draw attention and capture the interest of your audience. However, this objective must be linked to another equally relevant one: how to get relevant results from your survey that can be used later to get valuable information. In other words: how to make useful surveys.
There is not a single answer to that question, but there are some things to consider when creating online surveys that will then allow you to get useful data to better understand the results.
The quality of the questions is a determining factor in order to achieve results that become valuable information.
Plan your obvious questions
Some questions will be a bit obvious. For example, if you want to know the satisfaction of a customer after the sale or use of a service, or an assistant to an event you organized, then your online questionnaires will undoubtedly include at least one question that assesses the level of satisfaction (or dislike).
Ideally, these types of questions are straightforward and blunt and the answers are single selection. That is, the respondent is forced to quantify their level of satisfaction, for example, from 1 to 10 and in a mandatory manner. In this way, the subsequent interpretation of the data will be simpler, since you can make a comparison between numerical ratings of different respondents, establish the average overall satisfaction, among other things.
Leave room for the respondent to give his opinion
Beyond your need to quantify the data to be able to interpret it more easily later, it is important to leave space in the online surveys for participants to express themselves freely, because surely several of them will want to provide details of their happiness (or disagreement).
Therefore, a second question, directly related to the previous one but which allows to delve into details, can be closed and give predetermined options for the respondent to choose one. However, you should also leave some space open in case the respondent has a very specific comment.
Include questions to know each person in detail
Beyond the necessary questions directly related to the central theme of your online surveys, it is recommended that you include others that allow you to better understand the participants and allow you to individualize each respondent to the maximum so you can establish comparison parameters between different subgroups.
Following the previous examples (customer surveys or event attendees), you may wonder what is the use of knowing the sex, age, address or studies of the people who answer your online survey if what you really want to know is their level of satisfaction with the experience.
You probably also think that adding these questions will make your web survey too long and participants will be upset when they have to complete them. They may be interested in leaving their opinion answering the questions described in the previous section, but nobody likes to waste time explaining personal details.
While there is some reality in all these issues, the truth is that they are necessary questions to obtain valuable information for the subsequent evaluation of the results. Accessing this type of demographic data of the people who participate in the survey will allow you to segment them, know different profiles, compare them and identify very valuable aspects. In addition, if they are well written, they are usually questions that are answered in a brief moment and should not waste the respondent a lot of time.
For example, if it is an online survey about a service and the majority of people over 40 years claim to have been dissatisfied, while, on the other hand, the group between 20 and 40 years responds that the service provided was excellent, a possible conclusion is that a series of adjustments must be made to said service when it is provided to clients over 40 years, since something is failing in that segment.
In short, the quality of the questions is a determining factor in order to achieve results that become valuable information. We invite you to see some examples of how to create customized and attractive online forms for multiple devices with SurveyKiwi. Enter our website to learn more about us.