It’s that time of year, the beginning, the time when we make resolutions to spend more time with friends, to work out more, to eat healthier, to just be better. I decided that this year I would extend this idea of making resolutions to my surveys.
After just spending a few moments thinking about it, I came up with three resolutions that I felt would not only help my surveys, but would also be easy to keep. These are my survey resolutions that I commit to in 2013:
- Make sure my lists are as clean as can be – Okay, so this first resolution is really about my pre-survey work. List cleaning is not glamorous and can be tedious work, but it always pays off in the end. I want to investigate bounced emails, identify contacts with missing information, and most importantly make sure that my unsubscribing contacts wishes are respected. A clean list leads to a better response rate and a better feeling about myself.
Eliminating double-barrelled questions
– Have you ever asked a respondent to rate you on your skills and expertise thinking that these two items were basically the same? Think again…..this is a double-barreled question; when you ask a question that touches upon more than one element, yet allows for only one answer. This type of question can result in inaccuracies in data. If the respondent thinks that you have great skills, but that you are not an expert in your field, they may be unsure how to rate you. This technique is often defaulted to as a time and space saving effort, but it fails to provide accurate results.
Finding a scale, and sticking to it
– I am a big fan of the traditional 1 to 10 scale, but can be swayed to add a 0, or shortening my scale to a 0 to 5. It is time for me to pick a scale and use it consistently, not only within a survey, but also across surveys so that I can easily track and compare Key Performance Indicators. Making this decision will make creating surveys easier (I will always know what scale to use) and be useful when trending my results over time.
These are my 2013 survey resolutions. What are yours? We would love to hear them and maybe, just maybe we can commit to those resolutions as well!
Cheers to yet another year of happy surveying, and it is off to the gym for me to work on some other new years resolutions!