About Surveys

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!

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.

By Scott M. Smith Ph.D.

How do you Increase online survey response rates? Survey response rates are a function of the

1. Clarity of instructions, purpose and questions
2. Motivation of the respondent to respond
3. Interest of the respondent in the survey
4. Survey length and ease of completing the survey
5. Incentives and rewards for completion

The Theory behind ìHow to Increase Survey Response Rates:
Why do people participate as respondents in a survey?

The question often asked by marketing researchers is how to increase online survey response rates. Evangelista, Albaum and Poon (1999) investigated four behavior theories of motivation that can be developed into specific techniques (including inducements) for increasing online survey response rates. The following theories are among those that have been proposed (and studied to varying degrees) as answers to this question. (This overview has been abstracted and edited with permission of Evangelista, F., Albaum, G., & Poon, P. (1999, April). An empirical test of alternative theories of survey response behavior. Journal of the Market Research Society, 41, 2, 227ñ244. )

Using Exchange and Incentives to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

The process of using survey techniques to obtain information from potential respondents can be viewed as a special case of social exchange. Very simply, social exchange theory asserts that the actions of individuals are motivated by the return (or rewards) these actions are expected to, or usually do, bring from others.

Whether a given behavior occurs is a function of the perceived costs of completing a survey and the rewards (not necessarily monetary) one expects to receive as a result of completing the survey.

Under this theory, survey response rate is increased by meeting three conditions:

1. The costs for survey response must be minimized.
2. The rewards for survey response must be maximized.
3. There must be a belief by potential respondents that such rewards will, in fact, be provided.

Larger incentives for survey completion will generally produce larger response rates. These incentives are often offered in the form of random drawings or incentives to the first 100 respondents to the survey. Respondents generally do not understand the probabilities of winning and like the case of lotteries, respond better to the change of a very attractive incentive. Incentives distributed as drawings allow the researcher to control the costs of the survey and spread the budgeted amount across a large number of respondents.

Using Cognitive Dissonance to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

Cognitive dissonance theory when applied to increasing survey response, integrates a broad range of research efforts on inducement techniques for survey response. As used to explain survey response, the theory postulates that reducing dissonance is an important component of the "respond/not respond" decision by potential survey respondents.

The process is triggered by receipt of a questionnaire and cover letter asking for participation. Assuming that failure to respond might be inconsistent with a person's self-perception of being a helpful person, or perhaps at least one who honors reasonable requests, failure to respond will produce a state of dissonance that the potential respondent seeks to reduce by becoming a survey respondent.

Since the decision to participate in an online survey involves a series of decisions for some people, delaying the ultimate decision may be a way to avoid completing the questionnaire without having to reject the request outright (and thus experience dissonance). Delaying a decision, therefore, may in itself be a dissonance-reducing response.

Using Self-Perception to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

Self-perception theory asserts that people infer attitudes and knowledge of themselves through interpretations made about the causes of their behavior.

Interpretations are made on the basis of self-observation. To the extent that a person's decision to respond to a survey is attributed to internal causes and is not perceived as due to circumstantial pressures, a positive attitude toward survey response develops.

These attitudes (self-perception) then affect subsequent behavior. The self-perception paradigm has been extended to the broad issue of online survey response. To increase the precision of this paradigm, the concepts of salience (importance of behaviors one has attended to), favorability (the affect or feeling generated by a given behavioral experience), and availability (information in memory) are utilized.

In addition, researchers should create labels (i.e., helpful, kind, generous) to enhance the effects of online survey response. Labeling involves assisting the prospective respondents to classify themselves based on their behavior such that they will act in a manner consistent with the characterization.

Self-perception would predict that using an invitation letter to label behavior as "helpful" would cause that person to view himself or herself as the kind of person who engages in such behavior; therefore, the likelihood of later label consistent behavior is increased.

Using Commitment and Involvement to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

Increasing online response rate may be a function of the range of allegiance an individual has for any system of which he or she is a member. Consistent behavior based on commitment and involvement requires that the respondent:

1. Has been involved or committed over some period of time
2. Has been involved or committed to the pursuit of at least one common goal
3. Rejects other acts of behavior inconsistent with an involved or committed individual.

Consequently, the major elements of commitment are most likely to increase online response rates when the respondent recognizes that they:

1. His or her decision to respond to an online survey has consequences for other interests and activities not necessarily related to it.
2. The person is in a position to respond by merit of his or her own prior behavior.
3. The potential respondent, as committed person, must recognize the invitation to respond to the survey is a result of their prior action (membership or involvement), and realize that their response is necessary.

Online response rates for individuals highly committed and involved with the survey sponsor are much less likely to terminate the survey than those who is uncommitted.

The theory of commitment (or involvement), as extended to increase survey response rates, indicates that we may attach commitment to many different aspects of a survey, such as:

• the source or the sponsor
• the researcher
• the topic and issues being studied
• the research process itself

To a large extent, commitment is manifested by interest in what is being asked of the potential respondent.

Evangelista, Albaum and Poon found that Commitment/Involvement and Economic Incentives were most effective in increasing survey response rates. Our experience over thousands of surveys echoes this finding.

Other Considerations That May Be Used To Increase Online Survey Response Rates
When designing a survey that maximizes survey response rate, the researcher must consider issues that can affect response rate and data quality, including:

ï Clarity of instructions, purpose and questions
ï Preliminary notification
ï Time required of respondent
ï Use of inducements
ï Open coding of responses
ï Identification of sponsor and source
ï Follow-up policy
ï Questionnaire (measurement instrument) design
ï When to contact respondents
ï Type of appeal to use
ï Potential respondents interest and commitment to the topic and/or study
ï Others unique to a specific technique of data collection (e.g., text only or text and graphics in the survey)

The final point of increasing response rates for online survey is the need for pre-testing the survey. By conducting a pretest, you can:

• Identify problematic questions and rewrite them
• Identify problem points within the survey through discontinuation rates
• Identify points of confusion
• Estimate the real cost of data collection
• Estimate the response rate and thus obtain a better estimate of list size and the associated resulting sample size
• Estimate the distribution of responses to key research questions

Pre-testing allows for optimization and testing of preliminary notification letters, incentives, follow-up letters and invitations, and types of appeals to be used.

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.

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.

Building or creating a great survey is a struggle for most researchers. Understanding how to build a survey starts with understanding the research process. The most important step is simply properly formulating the problem that you are trying to understand. Simply stated, if you don't formulate the problem correctly, you can never build the optimal (or even good) survey or questions.

The best approach to build a survey is outlined in the following steps:

1. Review the basic research objectives of the study.
   • What is at the heart of what you are trying to discover?
   • What actions do you want to take as a result of the survey?
2. Visualize all of the relevant information items you need.
   • What will the output report look like?
   • What charts and graphs will be prepared?
   • What information do you need to be assured that action is warranted?
3. Prepare a written list of the topics in items 1 and 2 and order them according to their value in solving the research problem. List the most important topics first. REvisit items 1 and 2 again to make sure the objectives, topics and information you need are appropriate. Remember, you can't solve the problem if you don't ask the right questions.
4. Next, ask yourself "How easy or difficult is it for the respondent to provide information on each topic? If it is difficult (they probably don't know, can't remember, can't access the information or won't take time), then ask yourself if there another way to obtain the information. Perhaps asking another question or using another data collection technique.
5. The fifth step in building a survey is to review the sequence of topics to make sure they are unbiased. Do the questions asked first influence or bias the results of the next questions? Sometimes providing too much information. Perhaps asking another question or using another data collection technique
6. Determine the type of question that is best suited to answer the question. We must also think about the type of data produced by a given question type.
   One easy way to do this is to create a table in MS Word or Excel that has three columns:

   Question	Answer Format	Type of analysis to be conducted
   Enter the questions	Enter the possible answers and their answer format: Categorical, Ordered, Ranking, Rating. open-ended text questions, dichotomous, multiple choice, rank order, multiple choice matrix, Likert or Semantic Differential scales, constant sum, conjoint, side by side	Percentages, frequency counts, means and standard deviations, cross tabulations and statistical tests (chi-square, t-test, ANOVA, regression, multivariate analysis).

   In column 1, we enter the questions. In column 2, we indicate the possible answers and their format: open-ended text questions, dichotomous, multiple choice, rank order, scaled or constant sum (ratio scale). Finally, in column 3, we determine the type of analysis (percentages, means and standard deviations, cross tabulations and statistical tests). Do the question and answer formats provide enough robustness to meet analysis requirements.

7. Write the questions. You will need to write several versions of each question when you are building your survey. Building a great survey and building great questions often take six or more drafts. Select the best one.
8. Review the question sequence for bias and logical flow.
9. Repeat all of the steps above to find any major holes. Are the questions really answered? Are the answers what you really need to know? Have someone review it for you.
10. Time the length of the survey. A survey should take less than five to ten minutes. At six questions per minute, and depending on the question difficulty, you are limited to about 30-40 questions. When building a survey, remember that one open end text question counts for three multiple choice questions.
11. Pretest the survey to 20 or more people. Obtain detailed feedback . . . critically look at their responses.
    • Do they make sense, or do they have a different frame of reference than you had imagined.
    • What were they unsure about?
    • Did they have questions?
    • Did they have trouble understanding what you wanted
    • Did they take a point of view not covered in your answers or question?
12. Revise your questionnaire and pre-test again or begin data collection.