SEARCH
Get The Most Out of Your Survey: Tips for Writing Effective Questions
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by rafal on August 13, 2010 | No Comments
Perhaps the most important factor in carrying out a successful survey is the quality and structure of the questions you ask. At the end of the day, it’s what will determine whether you get back useful feedback or not. Poorly structured questions can result in incomplete, biased and/or unfocused responses, and ultimately lead your research to be ineffective. In this post we’ll take a look at some of the “Do’s” and “Do Not’s” of question creation to assure that you get the most out of your survey.
The “Do’s”
Each question should be focused on a single topic or issue: Questions need to be concise and specific while only asking respondents about one issue at a time. This will reduce uncertainty on the respondent’s part and assure that you receive the information you’re looking for.
Bad Question: How do you feel about Wal-Mart?
Good Question: Please rank each aspect of Wal-Mart on a scale of 1-5...
Questions should be brief: Long drawn out questions can increase confusion and the risk that a question is misinterpreted by the respondent. To guard against this, keep questions short and sweet.
Bad Question: When some appliance in your home breaks, do you call Sears repair service to come and fix it?
Good Question: When you need it, do you call Sears repair service?
Questions should be as grammatically simple as possible: Make questions easy to understand by keeping them simple in their wording and grammar.
Bad Question: If the Sears repair service schedule was not convenient for you, would you consider or not consider calling a competing repair organization to fix the problem you have?
Good Question: If you did not use Sears repair service, would you use another repair service?
Questions should be crystal clear: It should be obvious what the question is asking. Questions should be presented in their rawest form possible, without any unnecessary words and phrases.
Bad Question: How much do you think you would have to pay to have Sears fix something that needs to be repaired?
Good Question: How much do you think Sears charges for a repair service call?
The “Do Not’s” of Question Writing
Questions shouldn’t “lead” respondents to a particular answer: A leading question is one that suggests an answer. These should be avoided to prevent against biased responses.
Bad Question: Shouldn’t concerned parents use car seats?
Good Question: Do you think infant car seats are useful?
Questions shouldn’t have “loaded” wording or phrasing: Avoid using “loaded” language in questions, or words that might have an emotive implication. Questions should be neutral in language.
Bad Question: Should car seats be used for our loved ones?
Good Question: Do you think car seats are useful for family members?
Questions shouldn’t be “double barrelled”: Questions that could have two possible responses should not be asked. They should be split up into two parts and asked separately.
Bad Question: Do good parents and responsible citizens use car seats?
Good Question: Do you think parents who use car seats are responsible?
Questions shouldn’t use “dramatics” or words that overstate the condition: Questions should be worded as neutrally as possible. Descriptive words that could exaggerate the scenario should be avoided as these could coax the respondent towards a particular answer.
Bad Question: Do you believe infant car seats can protect riders from being maimed?
Good Question: Do you think child car seats are useful?
Avoid extreme absolutes: It is best to avoid words that suggest extreme absolutes. These place respondents in a situation where they must fully agree or disagree with the position in the question. Some of these words are: all, any, anybody, best, ever, every, never, etc.
Bad Question: Do you always observe traffic signs?
Good Question: Do you observe traffic signs?
The questions in a survey act like the meat in a hamburger. They really are the most important part. Take your time crafting each one to make sure you’re asking exactly what you want to be asking while following the rules above, and you’ll be sure to get some great feedback!
Credits – Image courtesy of: http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/leading-the-perfect-qa/
Entrance and Exit Popup Survey Invites
Posted in: Uncategorized by admin on November 29, 2009 | No Comments
Once you create your survey, you may want to deploy it from your own site. When you are doing this deployment, you may want users to see the invitation to the survey when they first enter your site. Alternatively, you may want them to see the invitation to the survey after they have been in the site for a certain number of seconds. Further to this, you may want them to see the invitation to the survey just as they are about to leave the site.
As you are inviting your visitors to a survey, if someone specifies that they would not like to participate in the survey, then they will not be prompted the next time they come to your website. If someone has already taken the survey, they will not be prompted to take it again either.
Watch this video tutorial on creating pop-ups:
Join a Free FluidSurveys Webinar in about 90 mins! Hurry! :)
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on November 4, 2009 | No Comments
Hey Everyone,
We’re hosting another FluidSurveys webinar at 2pm EST today (about 90 minutes away). If you’d like to attend, please send an email to info@fluidsurveys.com and we’ll send you the webinar details.
The webinar is only 45 minutes long and will give you a good idea of how to use FluidSurveys. All you need is your computer, an active internet connection, and some speakers/headphones.
What are we going to be discussing?
2:00-2:05: Brief introduction of FluidSurveys
2:05-2:15: Survey Editor
2:15-2:25: Analyzing Your Data
2:25-2:35: Publishing Your Survey
2:35-2:45: Q&A
Top 10 Reasons Why We Love IE6 (Internet Explorer 6)
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on September 28, 2009 | No Comments
As you know, we here at FluidSurveys try our very best to make sure that our software works with Internet Explorer 6. We have lots of corporate clients and they use IE6 – so we don’t have much of a choice in the matter 
In any case, rather than complain about it, we embrace it and we’ll have fun with it too! This is our gift to the web developers accross the world who work just as hard as we do to make their web applications cross-browser compatible. Cheers!
Cherokee Web-Server SSL Setup
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on September 25, 2009 | 2 Comments
Over the last couple of days we have been running into quite a few issues regarding our SSL certificate in Internet Explorer 6. Once we made sure all of the media on our site was coming from a valid SSL source, our certificates worked fine on all browsers aside from the dreaded IE6. Though this is becoming less and less of a concern to many people, we here at FluidSurveys still work hard to support those die-hard fans who for whatever reason refuse to give up the browser war and continue to side with the six.
One Time Fee Surveys Explained – No more Monthly Fees.
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on September 13, 2009 | No Comments
[Update: Survey Pricing is subject to variation - please check the pricing page for the latest updates]
Greetings Everyone!
We’re very excited to announce that we are kick-starting something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while now… We will now be doing a weekly show to talk about the latest and greatest things that are going on in the company, introduce our team members, and give you some insight into what we are all about. We have the coolest product on the market and now we’re doing video! We feel that in this day and age, we don’t get to meet most of our customers in person and they don’t get to meet us. The goal of “FluidSurveys in 60 Seconds” is to get our customers to meet us more personally. At the same time, we encourage our customers to send us video messages and we’ll gladly post them on the blog as well. This will give us an opportunity to interact face to face – in a very new-age sense
Top 5 Reasons Fluid Surveys is the Best Way to Create Online Surveys
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on September 11, 2009 | No Comments
I love this question… the answer is probably not what you expect.
In the past we’ve covered (in this blog) some of the features that make FluidSurveys a great way to create online surveys. The reason is simple: we’ve spent the last few months working really hard to grow our online survey software by adding tremendous value through great features: conditional branching, export to SPSS, random skip logic and more, the problem is that for the the average Jimmy, Sally or Susie… well, that may not be so important. Sometimes, Jimmy, Sally or Susie care about a company that responds, that interacts, that helps, that puts them first. Let me tell you, in my opinion, why Fluid Surveys is probably the best (and coolest) way to create online surveys:
1 – We are on Twitter
Visit our Twitter Page
Yup, it’s true. We’re on Twitter. We will be sharing ideas, providing customer service and interacting with you to improve FluidSurveys… all via 140-character messages in real time. Our twitter id is: @fluidsurveys.
2 – We have a Youtube Channel
Visit our Youtube Channel
Wait, now you’re thinking that because we are on every service we are cool? No. Our FluidSurveys youtube channel is filled with help videos on how to create online surveys with FluidSurveys and video guides on specific features like inserting images into your survey and others. Let us know if you want a feature explained and we will create a video for it!
3 – We are Real People Answering Your Questions
Call us at now 1-877-298-7792
Don’t believe me? Call us now at 1-877-298-7792. It will be real people picking up the phone.
4 – We have a Free Version
Register a Free Account Today!
We will not ask you for a credit card number or any payments. We have the real deal and for FREE. Register now for a free account and try our service. We have also launched a one-time payment option if you want more advanced features but you only need to send one survey.
5 – Our Technology is Made in Canada
Our team is in North America. We live in both the US and Canada. Our data is strictly hosted in Canada or the US based on the country that you live in. We are reliable, we are secure and above everything, we respect your privacy. Your data is yours.
Move Questions From one Survey to Another – Copy and Paste
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on August 28, 2009 | No Comments
Sometimes you’ll have questions in one survey that you’d like to use in another. It would be quite tedious to have to recreate those questions. It would be really nice if you could simply copy them from your other survey and paste them into your new survey. The good news is FluidSurveys allows you to do this quite easily. FluidSurveys has a very easy to use right click menu that you can use to copy your questions from one survey or even a given version of a survey into another survey.
In order to learn how this works, check out the video below:
Partnerships and Affiliate Marketing Programs with FluidSurveys
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on August 25, 2009 | 2 Comments
Recently, we have been approached by a number of different organizations/associations looking to form a partnership with FluidSurveys. After forming a number of these partnerships we decided that we’d launch an official partnership program. If you represent an organization/association and would like to offer FluidSurveys to your members or stakeholders, do visit the FluidSurveys Partnership Page.
Further to this, we have also launched the FluidSurveys Affiliate program to help affiliate marketers sell FluidSurveys products both online and offline. If you are interested in becoming an affiliate, make sure to visit the FluidSurveys Affiliate Page.
Looping, Create Loops within Your Online Survey and some info on Branching + Piping
Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by admin on August 21, 2009 | No Comments
Yesterday’s post about our 3D Matrix got a lot of our customers pretty excited. Today, we’ll be talking about Looping. So what is looping anyway? Well, let’s say that you were to ask a group of people which energy drinks they’ve tried in the past. So, you would give them a list of energy drinks and they’d tell you which ones they had tried before. Then, let’s say that you wanted to ask the same series of 3 questions about each one of the energy drinks that they had tried in the past. For example, you could ask them, how much did you pay for Energy Drink X, and How Energized did you feel on a scale of 1 to 10 after having that energy drink? You’d want to ask these questions about each one of the choices. Hence, you need to use looping in order to make this happen. The good news is that FluidSurveys has built a very cool and easy to use looping interface.
Take a look at our video below to get a good idea of what looping is all about:
