A Bright Idea: Web-Based Surveys

If you’re looking for a quick, simple, and cost-efficient way to survey your members, you may want to try a Web-based survey service such as Zoomerang. Zoomerang offers users the ability to create and design their own surveys, send the surveys to targeted groups, and download the results, which Zoomerang tabulates.

McEwen, Kathryn. Tieline (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys

Building Effective Customer Surveys

Well-designed customer surveys can yield valuable information for your business. Unfortunately, though, a poorly worded survey can set you marching off in exactly the wrong direction. Below are some tips on designing surveys to get reliable, useful data.

Bennaco (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys

Changing the Way the Profession Communicates: A Workshop for Prospective Journal Peer Reviewers  

More than 90% of Technical Communication readers are informed practitioners--writers, editors, illustrators, designers, trainers, and project managers. About 10% are teachers and students. They come from diverse backgrounds as well as from technical communication programs.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Orange County (1998). Articles>Rhetoric>Audience Analysis>Surveys

Collecting and Incorporating Feedback from Customers: Making Telephone Surveys Work (for You and for Them)  

There is no question that feedback from customers is a vital input to any information-development process. To try to develop good and useful information without knowing how customers use (or intend to use) it is to work in a vacuum. To produce and deliver information and to ignore the follow-up activity of checking customers use of and satisfaction with the information is nothing less than gross negligence.

Grice, Roger A. and Lenore S. Ridgway. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>User Centered Design>Assessment>Surveys

Communication, Culture and Surveys  

Interest in corporate culture has been on the increase ever since studies over a decade ago found a link between certain cultural aspects and successful business outcomes. Buthow can you measure the bottom-link impacts of culture in your own organization?

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Cultural Theory>Surveys

Conducting Mail, Telephone, and Online Surveys: 1998  

While surveys appear surprisingly easy to plan and conduct, they are fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. That said, technical communicators can use surveys as a tool to enhance their understanding of audiences, assess the effectiveness of their communication products, and determine the value of technical communications to their company--if they follow wellestablished social science and communication science methodologies. This workshop will provide you with the foundations you need for developing, conducting, and managing surveys; analyzing the data, interpreting surveys and reporting your results.

Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys

Conducting Mail, Telephone, and Online Surveys: 1999  

While surveys appear surprisingly easy to plan and conduct, they are fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. That said, technical communicators can use surveys as a tool to enhance their understanding of audiences, assess the effectiveness of their communication products, and determine the value of technical communication to their company--if they follow well-established social science and communication science methodologies. This workshop will provide you with the foundations you need for developing, conducting, and managing surveys; analyzing the data, interpreting surveys and reporting your results.

Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys

Connecting Surveys to the Bottom Line

Most communication surveys pose questions about how well messages have been understood and how effective different communication channels are. What surveys usually lack are questions that link the communications you manage to the effect they have on employee behaviors, which result in improvements in the bottom line. Here are two examples of communicators who used surveys to analyze behavior and build a business case for their budgets.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Assessment>Surveys

Customer Satisfaction Measurement  

What are the best ways to measure customer satisfaction? Wiley shares some of her ideas.

Wiley, Ann L. Intercom (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys

Decision Models for Comparative Usability Evaluation of Mobile Phones Using the Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ)  

A comparative usability evaluation was performed using various subjective evaluation methods, including Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ). Further, decision-making models using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and multiple linear regression were developed and applied. Although the mean rankings of the four phones were not significantly different across the evaluation methods, there were variations across the methods in terms of the number of rank orderings, preference proportions, and methods to select their initial preference. Thus, this study provided a useful insight into how users make different decisions through different evaluation methods. Also, the result showed that answering a usability questionnaire affected a user's decision-making process for comparative evaluation.

Ryu, Young Sam, Kari Babski-Reeves, Tonya L. Smith-Jackson and Maury A. Nussbaum. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>Usability>Assessment>Surveys

Developing and Implementing Effective Web-Based Surveys  

In this paper we will report on the development and implementation of the first part of a two-part web-based survey distributed to a university population of over 20,000 faculty, staff and students. This large-scale project presented multiple operational, technical and design challenges. User-centered design was crucial to the successful development and deployment of the survey. This survey tool was used to explore the richness and potential value of web surveys motivated by a combination of a desire to improve both the survey-taking process and results-computing process. The objective of this research is to design and implement an effective Web survey tool, record user participation, determine the value of implementing a two-part survey over time (longitudinal), and to identify improvements for future web-based surveys. The benefit to the organization will be the identification of service areas in need of improvements and the ability to match satisfaction level with actual product/service costs.

Andrews, Susan and Susan Feinberg. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys

Evaluating and Managing Surveys

While surveys aren't the only research tool available to HR managers, they are the most useful one when 'hard' numbers are needed on how many people see things a certain way and when it's important to track differences among subgroups or improvement over time.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2004). Careers>Management>Assessment>Surveys

Evaluation of Digital Libraries Using Snowball Sampling  

This article describes how snowball sampling was applied in two different cases to evaluate digital collections. The first digital library was evaluated by conducting in–person interviews with survey participants. For the second digital library, an e–mail survey was mailed to site users. The results are compared and a cost–benefit analysis is provided. The author concludes that the convenience of an e–mail survey is not necessarily the most effective way to survey users.

Peterson, Elaine. First Monday (2005). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Surveys

Examining the Scope of Channel Expansion: A Test of Channel Expansion Theory With New and Traditional Communication Media    

This article draws on channel expansion theory to explore the selection and use of communication media by organizational members. Channel expansion theory scholars posit that media richness perceptions are dependent on experiences with communication partners, the message topic, and the communication media utilized. This study tests channel expansion theory in the context of new and traditional communication media. Respondents (N = 269) completed questionnaires regarding their use and perceptions of face-to-face, telephone, e-mail, or instant-messaging interactions. Results indicate that experience with channel, topic, partner, and social influence are all significant predictors of richness perceptions, when controlling for age and media characteristics. Findings also suggest that the richness of a medium is not fixed and may be shaped by interpersonal factors, including one's relevant experiences.

D'Urso, Scott C. and Stephen A. Rains. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Communication>Theory>Surveys

Finding a Cure for Survey Fatigue  

A downward trend in survey response rates is often blamed on the fact that people simply become tired of taking surveys. Butthere are ways to avoid the malaise setting in, says Angela Sinickas, a key one being making sure thatpeople feel their opinions are actually being listened to. Here she shares three common causes of survey fatigue and how to deal with them.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys

Focus Groups or Survey?

This month's column is a quiz. I'll set up some scenarios, you choose which research approach you think is best. At the end, I'll defend why I think my own answers are right!

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2000). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys

The Gentle Art of Questionnaire Design  

It is important for us to gain knowledge about our audiences before we start developing our information packages. It is equally important for us to get feedback after we have produced our information so that we know how well it was received by our audiences.

Ridgway, Lenore S. and Roger A. Grice. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys

Get The Credit You Deserve From Surveys

The wonders of technology have opened up easy-to-use on-line survey creation and analysis. Yet if you take the numbers the surveys provide at face value, you may be under-representing your audience's true responses. The following examples demonstrate how to phrase questions for more accurate results.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2002). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys

Getting the Most Use out of Research Results

All too often companies conduct a survey and do nothing with the results. This problem can be minimized through developing a highly actionable survey in the first place (the topic of this month's column) and making sure that management is committed to acting on the findings (to be covered next month). Here are some suggestions for developing a survey that leads to highly actionable results.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (1999). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys

How Companies Are Using Online Surveys to Measure Employee Satisfaction

With technology improving rapidly and costs continuing to drop, businesses are conducting more sophisticated online surveys. No longer confined to traditional paper-based surveys, companies are reaching out more than ever for employee feedback. These surveys include employee satisfaction, upward or "360" evaluations and the performance review process. Online surveys now contain open-ended questions, multiple formats and complex branching tools, giving businesses the potential to gather more insight about employees, corporate culture and business processes than ever before.

Frayne, Dennis. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Management>Online>Surveys

How Regular Polling can Support Communication of Change

You can't wait for the employee survey each year to see if you're making improvements in your change communication - you need to measure now. Polls are the pulse takers that give snapshots of perceptions. They describe how people are coping with change, what they are thinking, how they are feeling and the extent to which they are supportive of organizational goals. Tudor Williams, ABC, outlines the critical factors in ensuring your polls are accurate, usable and result in valid sets of data.

Williams, Tudor and Ryan Williams. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Methods>Surveys

How the Usability SIG Survey Was Developed

Although I had extensive experience creating surveys and analyzing survey results, working on a Usability SIG and an Employment and Salary Survey taught me a lot about a new survey tool.

Kleid, Naomi A. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys

Review: Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method  

If you're planning to conduct a survey, invest $70 USD in Dillman's book. It provides some of the finest methodological guidance available for conducting surveys.

Zimmerman, Donald E. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Usability>Surveys

Measurement at the Speed of Business  

Who has time to do communication audits anymore? Only the lucky few. The author shows ways to find out everything you need to know, just as fast as you need to know it.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2005). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys

Methods and Guidelines to Avoid Common Questionnaire Bloopers

Over the years, I’ve often heard colleagues say 'let’s throw a questionnaire together and find out what our users think about our product.' Implicit in this statement is the assumption that questionnaires are easy to design, administer, and analyze. This assumption is far from the truth.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys