Help me set up a survey
September 6, 2024 9:33 PM Subscribe
I have a question about the order of the response choices, and a question about which online platform to use. The survey is not expected to be scientific.
1. All the questions are roughly “Should we do X?” where the X changes with each question. The response choices are “Yes”, “No”, and “Neutral or unsure”. Is there a standard order for those types of choices? Is “Neutral or unsure” OK wording?
2. Ideally, I’d like to get the total results, plus results by geography. I would like to do minimal work, but I am open to paying a small amount. Ideally I would get the net score (number of “yes” responses minus number of “no” responses), both overall and for each geography, such as a state. People would indicate their geographic area on the survey form before the other questions. Do you recommend any particular online platforms for this?
In case it matters: The people who fill out the survey will likely get the link through one or more online forums.
1. All the questions are roughly “Should we do X?” where the X changes with each question. The response choices are “Yes”, “No”, and “Neutral or unsure”. Is there a standard order for those types of choices? Is “Neutral or unsure” OK wording?
2. Ideally, I’d like to get the total results, plus results by geography. I would like to do minimal work, but I am open to paying a small amount. Ideally I would get the net score (number of “yes” responses minus number of “no” responses), both overall and for each geography, such as a state. People would indicate their geographic area on the survey form before the other questions. Do you recommend any particular online platforms for this?
In case it matters: The people who fill out the survey will likely get the link through one or more online forums.
Google Forms or Microsoft Forms will work fine here.
You almost certainly don’t want people to manually type in a zip code, address, or city/state. Instead, you will want to provide a drop down list of geographical areas (e.g. state names). If your survey is primary for US folks only, consider having question 1 be something like Do you currently reside in the United States?. If the answer is no you can either have them skip the question to select their state or thank them for their time, but this survey is for US residents only.
I concur that modifying the questions to be on a Likert Scale would be more insightful. (On a scale from 1-5, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree , should we do X? (In the analysis, responses 1 & 2, will be treated as no, 4&5 will be treated as yes, and 3 will be treated as unsure /neutral).
posted by oceano at 8:07 AM on September 7 [1 favorite]
You almost certainly don’t want people to manually type in a zip code, address, or city/state. Instead, you will want to provide a drop down list of geographical areas (e.g. state names). If your survey is primary for US folks only, consider having question 1 be something like Do you currently reside in the United States?. If the answer is no you can either have them skip the question to select their state or thank them for their time, but this survey is for US residents only.
I concur that modifying the questions to be on a Likert Scale would be more insightful. (On a scale from 1-5, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree , should we do X? (In the analysis, responses 1 & 2, will be treated as no, 4&5 will be treated as yes, and 3 will be treated as unsure /neutral).
posted by oceano at 8:07 AM on September 7 [1 favorite]
Google Forms should work well for this.
Do you have a sense of how many responses you expect? If it’s a small amount of people taking the survey (say, n = 10 or less) I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If it’s a large amount of folks, particularly if it’s random people, I believe that Google Forms has the option to randomize the order of questions for each survey participant.
This is important because people tend to get tired of answering survey questions pretty quickly so you don’t want to have state #49 seem unpopular just because folks were getting bored and hitting whatever the first answer option is first.
posted by forkisbetter at 9:49 AM on September 7 [1 favorite]
Do you have a sense of how many responses you expect? If it’s a small amount of people taking the survey (say, n = 10 or less) I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If it’s a large amount of folks, particularly if it’s random people, I believe that Google Forms has the option to randomize the order of questions for each survey participant.
This is important because people tend to get tired of answering survey questions pretty quickly so you don’t want to have state #49 seem unpopular just because folks were getting bored and hitting whatever the first answer option is first.
posted by forkisbetter at 9:49 AM on September 7 [1 favorite]
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If you're willing to rephrase your questions, you can use the 'Likert scale' - that's the one with (strongly) agree / disagree.
posted by demi-octopus at 11:37 PM on September 6 [1 favorite]