Online Surveys: FAQs
The Office of Research, Planning and Assessment [RPA] is available to provide survey support for program reviews and annual continuous improvement assessments. Survey support is available to all programs, departments and Meredith College constituencies that are interested in developing and launching an online survey.
- What do I need to be aware of?
- What information and resources do you have on survey design?
- Who provides the analysis and reporting of survey results?
- Should I offer incentives?
What do I need to be aware of?
Institutional Review Board [IRB]
- Please be aware that Meredith College requires all research projects involving human participants to be reviewed by the Institutional Review Board [IRB]. The IRB review web site states that approval "is required prior to the initiation of the research so that these protections may be guaranteed". The primary ethical objective of the Meredith IRB is to provide an:
- independent review of risks, and
- assurance of informed consent.
Empliant™
- If you plan on designing your own online survey without RPA support, the Empliant™ survey tool is available through Technology Services.
- Empliant™ is an online campus-wide survey tool that is fully supported by Meredith College's Technology Services. Cheryl Todd offers technical training on a regular basis with the workshop, Creating Surveys with Empliant.
- All large surveys [greater than 100 respondents] should be cleared with RPA.
RPA Survey Support Services
- RPA is available to collaborate on survey design with a domain expert from your area and provide related survey analysis and reporting.
- If you require information or support for online survey design, analysis, or reporting, please contact Pam Steinke.
What information and resources do you have on survey design?
The first step is to determine the objective of the survey. What is it that you want to know? This includes who will be surveyed and the questions that will be asked. A well-defined objective will facilitate the task of question creation and should ultimately provide data that is reliable and valid.
An online survey should be as short as possible:
- Questions should focus on what you really need to know.
- Try to limit the respondents' survey-taking time to less than ten minutes.
A good question should mean the same thing to all respondents:
- Avoid technical terms and acronyms.
- Eliminate vague language.
- Do not create an implication [leading questions].
- Ask for an answer on only one dimension [double-barreled questions].
Group questions that are similar:
- Good flow in a questionnaire enables a respondent to easily transition from one question to the next.
- Questionnaires that move from one unrelated question to another create a perception of disconnection.
Other online survey considerations:
- Avoid creating questions that ask a respondent to rank an option by importance or preference. Ranking questions are often misunderstood and rarely yield good data.
- Be intentional and group answer types [radio buttons, checkboxes, matrices, etc.] as much as possible.
- Open response answers provide good detail but can be more challenging to analyze.
Survey design is challenging and should be approached knowledgeably. Please refer to our survey resources for additional information.
Who provides the analysis and reporting of survey results?
If you have chosen to collaborate with RPA on your survey design, we will provide the related analysis and reporting. Typically, the descriptive statistics [frequencies and percentages reported by question number] will be reported almost immediately after the survey has closed. Oftentimes, this type of of analysis and reporting will be sufficient.
Supplementary reporting requirements [e.g., cross-tabs, correlations, t-tests] depend on the initial survey objectives and question types.
Should I offer incentives?
Sometimes there should be enough motivation on the part of a respondent to know that their input will be useful. However, because of the potential constraints on respondent time and the recent proliferation of online surveys, offering incentives is one way to increase response rates. Recent offerings have included:
- Gift Card(s)
- Neomonde Restaurant
- Target
- Quail Ridge Books and Music
- Merchandise
- Apple iPod
- Williams–Sonoma Cookbook
The incentive offering should be nominal — only enough to encourage a respondent to participate.