In a famous study on organ donations, researchers found that simply changing the default option in Survey from checking a box to become an organ donor to checking a box to not be an organ donor vastly increases how many people become donors.
So, a survey is only as good as the questions it contains. One of the dangers when putting together a survey is not asking the right questions or asking them in a way which can result in data that is not useful, or, even worse, can lead your analysis in the wrong direction.
Hundreds of books and articles have been written about survey methodology, but in case you don’t have hours to devote to becoming a guru, here are seven best practices to consider when building your surveys.
7 best practices for creating effective surveys
1. Define a clear, well-defined goal for your survey
Begin with the end in mind. Instead of a goal like: “I want to better understand customer satisfaction.” Your goal should be something like: “I want to understand the key factors (internal or external) that are leading our customers to leave or provide a negative feedback.
It’s best to plan your survey by first identifying the data you need to collect and then writing your questions.
2. Best practices for writing effective questions
- Ask one question at a time. Stay away from bundling two different types of questions into one question.
- Allow ‘N/A,’ ‘neutral’ or ‘not sure’ answers. If a question doesn’t apply to a respondent, it is better to understand that than it is to get false data.
- Beware of acronyms. Don’t use acronyms without an explanation of what the acronym means.
- Rephrase Yes/No questions if possible. Many yes/no questions can be reworked by including phrases such as ‘how much,’ ‘how often,’ or ‘how likely.
- Minimize the number of textbox questions. Having more than 3 textbox questions will affect your response rate.
- Reduce the number of matrix questions. In general, matrix questions are not user friendly, especially if you are taking a survey on a mobile device.
- Avoid biasing the response. For example, see this question below. Having a question like this in your survey is likely to create bias in the response.
3. Keep your survey short – 5 minutes rule
In a best-case scenario, a survey should take 5 minutes or less to complete in order to get the best response rate. Anything longer than 10 minutes should be re-thought, or survey takers should be given an incentive for giving that much of their time to answer your questions.
So, make sure that every question is necessary and remove anything which is not absolutely needed.
4. Question order matters
Build your survey like a conversation.
Save personal question (like demographics) till the end. Would you start any exchange by asking someone how old they are? Probably not. Instead, you’d engage in small talk first, and gradually move on to more personal topics.
It is always a good idea to make sure that the first couple of questions are easy and interesting. This hooks the customer and gets them enthusiastic about jumping right in.
5. Use relative scale in your question options
Let’s look at the example question in below picture. What does it mean to be “in control” of one’s personal information? What people interpret and define as ‘in control’ may vary wildly across respondents.
A better question would be something like, “If you wanted to delete a post about you that you don’t like, how confident are you that you could find the place in Facebook to do this?”. So, make sure the scale is clear and normalized in your question.
6. Preview your survey before you send it
Imagine sending your survey only to realize that you forgot to add a question. Or that you didn’t include a few essential answer choices for one of the questions you asked. In either case, you’ll probably end up being frustrated and get results that fall short of what you need. ServiceNow Survey designer provides an easy way to see the preview of a Survey.
7. Take your Survey for a test drive
Think about what you are going to do with the answers and how are you going to analyze the data. You can’t take action on responses to questions you didn’t ask.
If you plan go send survey externally, keep spam filters in mind. Spam filters can cause your response rates to plummet. Effective survey distribution is also a key to improve survey response. I will write a separate post to cover survey distribution best practices in more details.
Looking for more best practices on Surveys?
Here are additional Resources to learn more:
- How to do sentiment analysis on Survey results?
- How to deliver Survey in Service Portal?
- 3 Ways to report on Survey results
- When to use surveys vs. assessments
- Best practices for making your Benchmarks reports more useful
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Behind the scenes here at ServiceNow, the Knowledge Management and Multimedia teams work closely with subject matter experts to disseminate critical information to our customers. We've found that certain topics come up frequently, in the form of best practices that can help you keep your ServiceNow instances running smoothly. This series targets those topics so that you and your organization can benefit from our collective expertise. If you have a best practices topic you'd like us to cover in this series, please let us know in the comments below.
To access all of the blog posts in this series, see our NOWSupport best practices series list.
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