Objective: Survey Design and Implementation Steps

1. Goals setting. (Why asking)
2. Target population to answer the survey. (Who to ask)
3. Interviewing methodology. (How to ask)
4. Questionnaire Design. (What to ask)
5. Pre-testing
6. Conducting the interview
7. Entering the data collected
8. Analyzing the data (Data => Information => Intelligence)
9. Produce the Reports

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1. Goals Setting:

The goals of the project should determine whom you will survey and what you should ask them. If goals are unclear, you might ask unnecessary questions or miss helpful ones. The more specific goals are, the easier the survey design is.
Some goals include:

• Potential market for a new product
• Rating of customer satisfaction
• Work environment
• Corporate image
• Distribution channels
• Identify new customer need to launch new product
• Analyze your competitors strengths and weaknesses
• Corporate Structure to analyze management style and organizational behavior.
• Sponsors evaluation
• Importance of ethics and social responsibility in the buying decision
• Employees Satisfaction…

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2. Target Population:

Two issues are very important: the right kind of people and the right sample size.
Correctly determining the right kind of people is very critical to achieve your stated goals. The larger the sample size, the more precisely it reflects the target group opinion. The decision on the sample size depends on time availability, budget, and degree of precision required. Also, it is important to avoid some common mistakes such as bias, leading questions, extreme views, and a typical people who do not represent the general public.

A Quota is a sample size for a sub group. It is useful to ensure that your target population represents all relevant sub groups. For example, it is important that your sample group represent men, women, minorities, cities and suburbs.

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3. Interviewing Methodology:

Interviewing methodology depends on many factors:

• Speed: E-mails and Web page surveys are the fastest, followed by the telephone interviewing. Interviewing by mail is the slowest.
• Cost: Personal interviews are the most expensive followed by telephone and then mail. E-mail and Web page surveys are the least expensive for last samples.
• Internet usage: E-mail and web page surveys offer significant advantages, but you cannot generalize their results to the population as whole.
• Literacy Level: illiterate and less-educated people rarely respond to mail survey.

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4. Questionnaire Design:

First, your questionnaire design must fit the medium used (Phone, mail, web…). Make sure you take the following considerations:

• KISS: Keep It Short and Simple
• Welcome message: Start with an introduction, introduce yourself, and explain the reasons for your survey.
• Allow a “Don’t know”, “Not applicable”, “Other”, or “None” responses when applicable.

There are 3 types of questions:

• Multiple Choices:
  • Rating Scales: How would you rate this product: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor
  • Rating Scales: From 1 to 10, choose how would you rate your interest in each topics: Politics, Health, TV, Soccer
  • Agreement Scale: How much do you agree with the following statement: “I prefer to work longer hours, fewer days” Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly agree
• Numeric Open End: Example: How much did you spent on groceries this week?
• Text Open end: Example: How can your company improve its work conditions?

• Questions and answers order that can encourage people to complete the survey; ideally, the early questions must be easy and pleasant to answer.
• How the order of questions and answers can affect the outcome of the survey.

Other Tips:

• Keep the questionnaire as short as possible
• Provide some sort of incentive/reward to your interviewees (gift, money…)
• Start with a title
• Always include a short introduction
• Give the name of the research company rather than the client (to avoid bias)
• Confidentiality insurances
• Good cover letter
• Make sure you allow all relevant choices
• Do not put two answers into one
• Be specific
• Avoid leading questions
• Avoid emotionally charged words

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5. Pre-test the Questionnaire:

Test your questionnaire with a small number of interviews before conducting a full-scale interview. A small focus group can also help evaluate the survey to ad relevant questions and remove unnecessary ones.

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6. Conducting the Interview:

Interviewees should be carefully chosen to represent your target market. Make sure all possible segments are included. Establish a time frame, location, and group size.
Allocate the needed budget to reach your goals

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7. Data Entry:

Data collected from surveys should be sorted and organized to provide useful intelligence. Much software can be used to tabulate all questionnaires and data provided by the surveys.

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8. Analyzing the numbers:

At this stage, “information” generated from “data” becomes “intelligence”. The decision making in terms of product design, pricing, marketing efforts, management style, communication medium and all business operations depend on these expressive numbers.

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9. Producing the Reports:

Reports must be professional and focus. A power point presentation with graphs and projections can be impressive and expressive. Numbers presented must support the strategy design. Statistics and projections must be relevant to justify any strategic plan.

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