Why survey creators need to pay more attention to the details of wording, question types and other matters that not only affect results but also how customers view the company. A recent survey from Sage Software had quite a few issues, and gives me the opportunity to share some pointers. The survey was for follow up satisfaction after some time with a new version of ACT! Call me a dinosaur, but after experiments with various online services, I still prefer a standalone CRM. Still, [...]

I saw the oddest question in a survey the other day. The question itself wasn’t that odd, but the options for responses were very strange to me. 1 - Not at all Satisfied 2 - Not at all Satisfied 3 - Not at all Satisfied 4 - Not at all Satisfied 5 - Not at all Satisfied 6 - Not at all Satisfied 7 - Somewhat Satisfied 8 - Somewhat Satisfied 9 - Highly [...]

Have you seen surveys where every question, no matter how trivial, is on a different page?  Or how about surveys that are just a single long page with many questions? Neither approach is optimal.  They don't look great to your primary customer — the survey taker — perhaps reducing your response rate. What's more, you may be limiting your options for effective survey logic. Every question on a new page The survey taker has to check the "Next" button too many times, with each [...]

Showing question answers in a random order reduces the risk of bias from the position.  

To understand this, think of what happens when you are asked to choose a question by a telephone interviewer.  When the list of choices are presented for a single choice question, you might be think of the first option as more of a fit, or perhaps the last option is top-of-mind.   The problem is even more acute when the person answering the survey has to comment on each [...]

I just have to share this in the hope that a reader will be able to enlighten me.  What could this possibly mean?
Not a provider that I would think of at first, but I probably would not consider it
OK, let me give some context. This is from a survey on business internet services. The researcher wants to know what would be my likely consideration for each of several providers if I'm choosing a new one. The choices are as [...]

I just came across an interesting issue with validation in an online survey using a Van Westendorp pricing model.  Van Westendorp is one of the common ways to test pricing by directly questioning prospective purchasers.  This post isn't about Van Westendorp, also known as the Price Sensitivity Meter (you can find plenty of references online, including  a starting point on Wikipedia) but you [...]

I asked myself this question the first time I saw a survey invitation with the following warning: Please note, this survey contains media that is not compatible with Firefox Internet Browser The invitation continued with instructions to copy and paste the link into an Internet Explorer window if Firefox is my default browser. Let's look at this in more detail. To dispose of the [...]