Posts Tagged ‘Sentences’

Designing surveys is easy; or is it? The truth is that writing surveys is easy but writing effective surveys is more difficult. The following twenty tips will help you write more effective surveys.

1. What is the purpose of the survey?

Surveys are conducted for many reasons. By phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The survey title is a golden opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so encourage them that the investment they make will be worthwhile.

3. The length of the survey needs to be as short as possible

Every question that is asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize the questions providing you with ‘nice to know’ information and focus instead on the ‘need to know’ questions.

4. Use plain English, avoid terminology and acronyms, be consistent and ensure that the questions you ask will not result in ambiguous answers

Care must be taken in wording a question. If a question is not clear then there is every chance that respondents may interpret the question differently to that intended by the publisher making any analysis of the data meaningless or at the very least misleading.

5. Avoid questions that are long

Where practical use short sentences. Long questions can cause a respondent to lose concentration and can lead to a higher level of incidents where respondents abandon a survey.

6. Ask one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like football and tennis?’

7. Avoid influencing the answer

It is important to avoid loading the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell tobacco to minors be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Ensure that the respondent can answer how they really feel or they may be inclined to abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Don’t know”, “No comment” or similar response option.

9. While you are compiling your survey consider how the survey results are going to be analysed when the survey is complete

Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider grouping the answers into groups that will match your analysis requirements. For example “How long have you worked here?” – ‘less than 1 year’, ‘between 1 and 6 years’ and ‘more than 6′.

10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group questions into clear categories as this will make it easier for the participants completing the survey.

11. Target your respondents

You may want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t control who responds to your survey consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t fit your target profile.

12. Allow the respondent to expand on their answer or make comments

Allowing respondents to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Keep in mind though that for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is upheld

If you have guaranteed the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and not used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed once the survey has finished.

14. Consider the benefits and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up specific complaints or match “pre” or “post” surveys. There are advantages to allowing respondents to remain anonymous for example it would allow respondents to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Carefully consider the best response format

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. Keep in mind that when analyzing the data radio buttons are easier to analyze than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. Do not use a check box format if a radio response format would do.

16. Inform the respondent as to the approximate time it will take to complete the survey

If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop out can occur. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so the respondents can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Advise the respondents of the survey end date

Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Test the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a small pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey carefully

Carefully check and then check again that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible get someone else to proof read the survey before you publish, if no one else is available then take a break before checking again.

20. Thank the respondent

To complete surveys respondents will need to invest their time and therefore should be thanked either at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider an incentive such as a reward of some sort.

For more information please visit Survey Galaxy

To get the most out of web marketing, you need to concentrate on both advertising AND natural search engine traffic. The first is easier to do, as there are tons of great marketing firms out there that can knock it out of the park with web advertising. An often ignored area, or at least undervalued, is building up natural search engine traffic. The reason is its harder to build up for each desired keyword and takes a lot of effort. Once done properly, you have built in traffic without spending a dime on marketing costs, and this traffic is permanent. Article directories are an important part of this effort and should be used for maximum benefit.

Using an article directory allows users to post content related to their website, and include links in this content back to their site. Currently, the search engines view some of the more established article directories as an authority source, so any posts to them get added impact in rankings. So ignoring this source of links is a mistake. While it can seem difficult to write so much content to be submitted to article directories over time, in the longer run it really will pay off.

To get the maximum benefit from using an article directory, you need to be able to spin your content. What is spinning? Its really very simple. It simply uses a computer program to auto substitute words and sentences randomly in place of what is written. So you might create something like “The dog is brown”. If you wanted to take this and spin the content, you could easily say “The dogs fur is white” or “The dogs fur is yellow in color”. They all say basically the same thing, just in a slightly different way – all of them talk about the dogs fur color. Doing this with your articles can actually create huge amounts of “new” content from a single article you write. Sure you have to provide the alternatives to substitute with, but then a computer does all the rest. This will give you maximum impact and protect you from getting penalized by the search engines for duplicate content submitted to article directories.

Changing the content around on a main article allows you to submit the content to multiple article directories and not worry about duplicate content.

10 or 15 copies of the same article submitted is totally fine, but you do not want 200 copies of the exact same article text submitted to directories on the web.