About Surveys

Automating processes is the new assembly line of the twenty first century.  Using computers and machines we take simple mind numbing tasks that humans dislike doing over and over again and we do them automatically with little or no human intervention.  When we automate surveys by programming them and putting them online we eliminate the need for humans to administer these surveys.  This decreases costs and increases accuracy for the data collected. 

While you will always find bias, for an online survey which is automated it is easier keep it unbiased.  This is because there is nobody actually giving the survey who could possibly allow their biases (even subconsciously) to affect the respondents.  Each survey will be presented in exactly the same way for each respondent.  The randomization of questions, answers or whole question scenarios becomes a breeze.   And the good part is that it has become very easy to make these surveys.  You no longer need to know how to do computer programming to make them.  These automated online surveys can be made online from a variety of companies (I suggest Qualtrics) in a very short time.

Hurray for modern technology!

One of the most asked questions in surveys and sampling is "what should my sample size be?"  It is definitely important and there are several factors that need to be taken into account before a sample size is determined.  These factors are:

The level of precision

The confidence level

Degree of Variability

There are several strategies in determining a sample size:

Use a Census for small populations

Use a Sample Size of a similar study

Use Published tables

Use a formula

There are actually several formulas that can be used to determine sample size.   They are all variations of the same princple formula.  A simple formula that will almost always be effective in determining a proper sample size is:

n=(N/(1+N(e)^2))

where:

n=sample size

N=Population size

 e=margin of error

A 360 evaluation is a technique used to gather information about an individual from all around them.  This is usually done through a survey.  The same survey is distributed to people with different relations to the individual.  For example, the feedback would come from subordinates, peers, and managers in the organizational hierarchy.  It is also common to obtain a self-assessment from the individual.  It is called a 360 Evaluation because the feedback comes from all-around the individual.

This is helpful because some individuals can be two-faced, and act and behave on one way to those above them, and completely different to those underneath them. With a 360 Evaluation, you can determine what different levels feel about the individual and get a better perspective of the whole picture.  Qualtrics surveys are great for doing 360-Evaluations and provide great reporting tools so you can easily understand what the feedback is saying.

Often when working online, you are in need of a spell-check feature. Let's face it, if you're like me, a spell-check feature comes in handy when you're typing faster than you're thinking. I create a lot of surveys and I've found, thankfully, there are some very simple options that are very helpful when creating survey questions. 

The latest versions of Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari browsers both provide built-in spell-check features. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, then you can install a simple add-on that will accomplish this for you (IE7Pro and ieSpell both provide a nice option for spell checking as well as instructions on how to use them).Now, any time you are entering text for a survey question, you will see the red underline when you have a questionable spelling. Hopefully you find these alternatives as helpful as I do!

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Japan and conduct several cross-cultural psychology experiments. For the majority of our experiments we used pencil and paper surveys. What a pain! We were collecting data from several colleges around the country, more specifically Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Aomori, Saporro, Kyoto, Sendai, and Osaka. Luckily we had about seven research assistants because it took forever to put all the information into a spreadsheet and then analyse it in SPSS. After putting all the information in the computer we also had to seperate different surveys from one another. It took about two months to complete. One of the other experiments, studying surnames and affluency, was completed using  an online survey tool. Although we had a lot of respondents in total our team probably only spent a couple hours having to analyze the results. It was so much easier to simply export the data into SPSS, rather than having to code, type, and then analyze. It saved us loads of time.

As the online survey software market grows, so do the features that are offered with various programs. Most have capabilities in other languages, depending on the language installed on the respondents computer. Many can even do multiple languages in the same survey. This is especially helpful when collecting data with a multilingual population. You can give the respondents the survey in the language that they would prefer. Thus, decreasing respondent comprehension errors.

Online surveys are no doubt the best way to do surveys. I was doing a survey for a project in my marketing class.  I proof read it and then I had some of my team mates proof read it.  It all looked good when we sent it out to our panel, but the next day I got an email from one of our respondents who Notified me that there were a couple of spelling errors (really embarrassing ones) in our survey.  Now in a paper survey there would have been no hope.  Reprinting and redistributing 50 or so surveys that had not yet been taken wouldn’t have been possible.  But because it was an online survey we were able to correct the errors in a less than a minute, and no one who hadn’t already seen the survey ever knew the difference. 

 Later that same year in my Economics class we were doing another survey to determine a demand curve.  About mid survey I was looking at the data, as it was being collected in real time, (which by its self is reason enough to use online surveys), when I noticed that one of our questions was not the correct question type to get us the data we needed.  The question was collecting what peoples preferences where but respondents were not ranking their preferences as we needed.  No problem I simply changed the question mid stream and we moved onward with survey, this time getting the data that we needed. 

This is the big benefit of online surveys.  You can see the results in real time and you can fix any errors in real time.  Online surveys are just so much more flexible and resilient than are paper surveys. 

With W-2's, 1099-T's, and 1040s we come to truly appreciate our beloved tax bureaucracy, the IRS. Tis the season for paying taxes. With the passage of April 15th, I once again am grateful for little tools that help me prepare, the barely legible tax forms. I personally use H&R Block for my taxes, but my brother uses Turbotax, both cost about the same. Yet, this tax season I was truly inspired by an accounting companies ingenuity. They used Qualtrics, to import the tax forms and sent the forms to their employees. Brilliance!

I actually was able to help them import one of their forms regarding research and development, it was about 10 pages long and only took me about an hour to import streamlining the whole process. I imagine that the hour I spent uploading this form saved their accountants a lot of time. Corporate taxes are much more complex than personal taxes, hence the need for a good CFO, but I was amazed at how Qualtrics was able to integrate and organize their data. I've been thinking about this myself and I might just  steal this idea for my personal taxes next year.

Determining what customers want and determining the trade-offs they are willing to make can be very useful information for a company to have.   Conjoint Analysis is a statistical technique that allows you to quantitatively assess the relative importance of individual components of a product or a marketing strategy.  It magnifies the joint effects of mulitiple product characteristics.  It can predict the customer switch rate from one product to another.  It can predict the reaction to new strategies and products.  It can predict the customer response to alternative pricing strategies.  It is a great tool that aids in decision making. 

Conjoint analysis starts off with a survey of the customer base you are targeting.  Qualtrics.com has conjoint functionality with a template that really makes easy the process of putting a conjoint survey together.  It is under their "advanced elements" option.  An example of a basic scenario in which this technique would be helpful follows:

A marketing manager of a athletic shorts company wants to get a better understanding of the trade-offs their customers are willing to make and their happiness level associated with those trade-offs.

They determine four factors they feel are important with different attributes within each factor:

Short Color: Red, Blue, Black

Price: $15, $20, $25

Inseam Length: 14 inches, 18 inches, 20 inches 

Pockets: Pockets, No Pockets

The survey will ask questions about the importance of these different factors to the individual customers.  The questions will ask how much more important one factor is than another. 

The actual analysis of the a conjoint study is difficult, but valuable.  It provides beneficial intelligence about the best interactions of product factors and want customers want.   There are programs that can aid in the analysis (SPSS, SAS, Qualtrics, etc.) and this is probably the best route to take. 

I have recently made and distributed a series of surveys for my marketing classes and Economics classes in the Marriott School of Management. The school has a license agreement with Qualtrics which allows students and faculty to use Qualtrics’ on line survey software to build and distribute surveys. This survey tool is largely unknown, by both students and professionals in the field. I don’t expect this to continue for long.

The Qualtrics survey software is one of the most useful business tools I have seen, I would put it right close up there with Excel and Word. The array of question types was dazzling. They had the most commonly used question types twelve or so neatly organized and easy to find. They where so easy to add into the survey and to add question and answer text was a breeze. It literally took me just a minute to put in several questions. If fact the vast majority of my time was spent planning what exactly I needed to ask in order to get the data needed. Once I knew what I needed to ask, building the survey took almost no time in comparison.

But the time saving didn’t stop there. I could view the results in real time as they came in. The basic statistics where already calculated for me and reported in tables for each question. I discovered I could put in and take out the different calculations in these tables. I could also add different graph types to more visually show the results. I found that I could also drill down by the answers to certain questions, showing how those of ethnic Mexican decent responded in one way to survey while other ethnicities had different responses. I was then able to make my report public, which generated a link I sent to my group so they could go over the results before we met to discuss it. If we had wanted we could have talked over the phone while each of us looked at the results on our computers. I also found I could down load these reports into word, power point, or excel.

I have played with the system a bit and you can even down load the raw data in to excel or to SPSS to do the more serious statistical analysis. There are all sorts of other features, quotas, Skip logic, Conjoint analysis, etc. . . .

On top of all this the surveys I sent out were very sexy. It looked great! I had class mates emailing me asking how we were able to make such incredible surveys. I’m sure they thought that we had a team member who was minoring in computer science.

To my understanding Qualtrics now provides their online survey software to many universities across the U.S. and even internationally. USC, Columbia, Duke, Texas University, Texas A&M, Yale, Stanford UCLA, Bristol, University of Michigan, North Western University, Wharton College of Business, and on the business side Mercer, Royal Caribbean, Daimon, Toyota, HP, and Even Microsoft use Qualtrics online survey software.

The easy, power, and usefulness of this online survey tool dwarf any of their competitors.

By Scott M. Smith Ph.D.

Employee attitudes, burnout tendencies, passion factors, loyalty, workplace climate, and competitive intelligence are key indicators for employee satisfaction, retention and productivity.

Qualtrics employee tracking will increase employee satisfaction and reduce employee turnover, thereby strengthening your organization. Many companies waste their organizationís HR training and mentoring efforts because employees are dissatisfied and leave. Employee satisfaction can be identified, tracked and improved with timely and accurate survey information.

Key Measures in an Employee Satisfaction Survey

The front line employee is where company meets the customer. The front line is critical to your business. From the customer's perspective, your front line employees are your business. Your organization depends on their service quality, productivity and passion to meet the needs of your customers.

Employee satisfaction surveys help your front line employees to coming together to achieve productivity goals and to provide high quality customer service and help your company achieve excellence.

Employee Satisfaction measures will help craft effective people strategies using our powerful and unique management tools to track indicators of quality, dissatisfaction and customer turnover, and precede actual employee decisions by months. Qualtrics has the most powerful survey software in the world we can help you learn more.

Find Out How to Measure Employee Satisfaction

By conducting an employee satisfaction survey with Qualtrics, you'll gain valuable information from the people most important in your organization — and fast. The Qualtrics do-it-yourself online survey tools are supported by experts in the survey and HR industry. Our experts will help you determine how to best measure employee satisfaction and answer questions like:

Scott Smith is the founder of Qualtrics.com. He is the James Passey Professor of Marketing and Director of the Institute of Marketing at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing and Quantitative Methods from Pennsylvania State University.