Survey Says...: The Professionals' Guide to Great Surveys

Is gaining accurate and useful insight into your customers, employees, or other audiences important to you? If so, surveys can be a very effective way of gathering actionable information - PROVIDED they are developed and administered correctly. Too often, however, people are dismayed to discover that their survey results yield little or no useful data. In addition to wasting precious resources, everyone ends up frustrated, including the survey participants.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Survey Says...: The Professionals' Guide to Great Surveys is a practical guide that addresses every aspect of developing, designing, and administering surveys that yield accurate, actionable results. The emphasis is on the "how to" because that's where the effectiveness of a survey is achieved. This book takes you through the five stages of the survey process: planning, designing, administering, analyzing, and reporting results and taking action. Each chapter contains an Insider Tip designed to help maximize the effectiveness of your survey process. You will learn how to:

• Manage critical success factors
• Select an appropriate survey expert
• Write effective survey questions and response options
• Increase the survey's accuracy
• Choose an online survey vendor
• Maximize your response rate
• Determine the appropriate type of data analysis
• Report results
• Avoid the mistake of overlooking the one most critical step of every survey process

While not rocket science, survey development and administration seldom is discussed or taught outside of select graduate level academic programs. Without this knowledge, people tend to make unnecessary mistakes that often leave them worse off than they were before they conducted the survey. Why go down that road when you easily can obtain dramatically better results by following the simple, time-tested tips and techniques contained in this book?

The bottom line: the knowledge you gain from this book will boost the quality of your survey data and, as a result, your ability to take effective action to better serve your customers, manage your employees, and/or work with other groups.