Survey Monkey Best Practices: Survey Design

What is Survey Monkey? Survey Monkey is the world's leading provider

of web-based survey solutions. At Survey Monkey you can:

Design a surveyCollect results

Perform an analysis based upon results

A free Survey Monkey account allows you to create 10 question surveys that up to 100 participants can respond to.

Getting StartedIn order to construct, collect and analyze

meaningful data it helps to do the following:Consider your audienceBe clear on what the survey subject isGroup similar questions together and sequence the

survey in a manner that does not confuse the participants

Be specific with your questionsIdentify your goal

Tips for Survey DesignWhen designing a survey have one specific goalBe certain you are choosing the right types of

questions; certain types cannot be analyzedUse sequencing: confusing and randomly ordered

questions can cause confusion and giving up on answering the survey

Break lengthy surveys into chunks and group similar questions together

A well organized survey makes it easier to analyze results

Setting Goals: Design the Survey Accordingly

Create your survey and give it a titleChoose and create your questions carefully or you can let the Monkey

make suggestionsAdd the questions to the surveySend & deploying the survey to your audience. You can do this Create a generic web link URL you can use any way you'd like;Create a tracked email invitation that can only answered once;Embed your survey on your website using HTML;Post to your Facebook wall or use our Facebook app;Have your survey show up in a pop-up window when respondents

visit your site.

Setting Goals: Before Surveying, Consider Your Criteria

Decide how you want to analyze the data before creating the survey. Do you want to filter by:

Responses (e.g. by department, sex, course, etc.)?

Properties like Response Dates, Email Address, IP Address, Completed Response Only, etc.?

Collectors (e.g. if you have more than one collector created for survey distribution)?

Two Types of Questions: Open and Closed-Ended

• Closed ended questions are direct questions that ask for specific pieces of information from a client. They can be answered with yes/no responses. By their nature they limit the client's field of choice and length of response.

Closed-ended questions can help to define a topic and the open question can elicit more information on that topic. For example "Do you have any children?" is a closed question requiring a brief yes-no answer. If we follow that up with "Tell me about them," we have given the client an open invitation to start anywhere and say anything they want to about their kids (Spillers, 2012).

The Open Ended Question

An open-ended question, which is subjective (Horton, 2011) cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no", or with a specific piece of information, and which gives the person answering the question scope to give the information that seems to them to be appropriate. Open-ended questions are sometimes phrased as a statement which requires a response.

Examples:Tell me about your relationship with your supervisor.

How do you see your future?Tell me about the children in this photograph.

What is the purpose of government?Why did you choose that answer?

Survey Monkey offers 16 formats of questions

Sequencing A SurveyA good survey design should help to stimulate recall (if necessary);

it should motivate the respondent to reply; and the survey should flow in an orderly fashion (Smart, n.d.). As a general guideline, there are three areas regarding question sequence: opening questions, question flow, and location of sensitive questions.

Opening questions: The first few questions in the survey should be easy and interesting in order to calm any participants suspicions about the survey’s integrity. This allows the participants to build up confidence in the survey’s objective. In return, this may stimulate their interest and overall participation (Iraossi 2006, 74-78).

Question flow: The question sequence in the survey body should take on a flow of ideas and be geared towards the respondents’ abilities. After you have established the first general topic, all related questions should come up before a second topic is raised.

Sequencing A Survey (cont.)

• Location of sensitive questions - some suggest that sensitive questions should not be included at the beginning of the survey. However, there are no set rules on this.

• If you do include sensitive questions at the beginning of the survey, then you may run into respondents rejecting the survey and exiting early. They may not have built up confidence yet in the survey’s integrity quite so early.

• Questions like demographics or personal information are usually best to introduce towards the end of the survey. This way, respondents are likely to have already developed confidence in the survey’s objective (Iraossi 2006, 74-78).

Collecting Feedback/Getting Survey Responses You’ll need to select a collector: a collector is what generates the

link to your survey, and it also determines the distribution method.You can choose one or multiple collectors; the more you choose the

wider your survey will be disseminated. Survey Monkey offers five types of collectors:

Web Link Collector : The link you send in your own email or post on your web page is called the Web Link Collector. This generates a single, anonymous survey link that you will be able to distribute yourself.

Email Collector: With the Email Invitation collector, you upload your email addresses into our system, customized your invitation message, schedule the delivery. The Monkey distributes a a unique tracking link to each recipient on your list. You can track who responds, managing opt outs, send out reminder messages to those who have not yet responded, and organize your email list by status.

Collecting Feedback/Getting Survey Responses (cont.)

Facebook Collector: Take advantage of social networking by inviting your friends on Facebook to take your survey. Place a survey link on your own wall's news feed and your friends' feeds, or embed a survey directly on your page.

Website Survey Collector: You can embed your survey on your website or display it in a popup window. You can specify the popup configuration that you want and we generate a link that includes all of the back end code to make your popup behave according to your settings. All you need to do is copy and paste this into your web page code.

Targeted Audience Collector: Using the "Buy a Targeted Audience" collector type (Currently only available to U.S. based customers), you can purchase survey responses from U.S. based respondents who meet your chosen demographic criteria.

How To Analyze Survey ResultsThere are five different ways to analyze survey results:

Viewing Survey Responses: The responses for each page are saved and displayed in the analyze section after respondents click the navigation button and successfully advance to the next survey page.

Filter Survey Responses: Filtering allows you to organize and view subsets of data for advanced analysis. Filtered data will display only the set of full responses that match your filter criteria, allowing you to find patterns in your data more easily.

Crosstab Survey Responses: Cross-tabulated data is useful for showing a side by side comparison of how respondents answered a particular question compared to the remaining questions they answered and determine how they are interrelated. The result is a table of the results, each column representing the group of respondents who selected a particular answer choice for the comparison question you selected.

How To Analyze Survey Results (cont.)

Download Responses: You can download the responses you've collected at any time (yes, even while you are still receiving responses) with a professional plan.

Share Responses: Sharing Responses enables you to provide direct access to a specific set of survey results without giving access to your account. With this feature, you can control how much detail to share by choosing between a variety of access level settings.

Questions about Survey Monkey?For signing up, selecting account type or updating your information visit Survey Monkey at:http://www.surveymonkey.com/home/

For detailed tutorials and links to help you build the survey of your dreams please go to this link:http://help.surveymonkey.com/

References:Horton, W. (2011). Chapter 5: Tests. In E-Learning by design (2nd ed., pp. 215-284).

Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Iarossi, G. (2006). The Power of Survey Design: A User's Guide for Managing Surveys, Interpreting Results, and Influencing Respondents. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.

Open and closed-ended questions. (n.d.). Pew Research Center for People & Press. Retrieved June 22, 2013, from www.people-press.org/

Smart survey design. (n.d.). Survey Monkey Help Center. Retrieved June 22, 2013, from http://s3.amazonaws.com/SurveyMonkeyFiles/SmartSurvey.pdf

Spillers, C. S., Ph.D. (2012). Closed-ended questions. University of Minnesota Deluth. Retrieved June 22, 2013, from http://www.d.umn.edu/~cspiller/csd8235/listeningpractice/closedquestions.htm

Survey design best practices. (n.d.). Survey Monkey Help Center. Retrieved June 22, 2013, from http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/Design-Tips-How-to-create-and-administer-effective-surveys