tutorial part:
1 2 

how to create

a Web Survey

Compared to the old fashioned way of conduction paper surveys, web surveys are cost effective and produce fast and accurate results. Keep in mind though that creating a web survey requires just as much planning as a paper dito. Below is a simple walk-through.

Who is your target group?

characteristics
behaviours
knowledge

Surveys are conducted to gather data - characteristics, behaviours and knowledge - of a specific population relevant to a specific problem. This means that the first thing you must do, is to clearly identify your research objective. That is, to answer the question "why am I conducting this survey?". The more fuzzy the answer to this question is, the wider your research scope will be, and the less useful your results is likely to become.

What information do you need from them?

This is perhaps the most difficult part of conducting a survey. The difficulty of asking questions stands in relation to your research scope - if your scope is narrow enough, the answer to this question should be pretty obvious. Anyway:

• Grab a piece of paper and write down what information you need from your target group.
  
• Formulate every piece of information into a question.
  
• Use plain, short and simple-to-understand language.
  
• Use language that your target group will understand.
  
• Group and order your questions (from the general to the more specific ones).
  
• Formulate answers to each question.
  
• Go over your answers since this is the step where most beginners fail.
  
• Go over each question and ask yourself this: "In what way is this question relevant to the problem I'm trying to solve?"
  
• Don't forget to ask your participants to comment your survey - this might very well yield information that must be considered when summarizing the survey, plus - you might learn something.
  
• Don't forget to thank your participants for participating...
  

Create the Questionnaire >