Surveying: Do it yourself or use a professional?...

When it comes to knowing what you need to know about your customers, employees or your membership, survey research is the most efficient way shed new light on the landscape in which you work. How well you perform survey research will determine just how brightly the light will shine.

Today, the Internet provides an exciting alternative in conducting survey research in your hands. New online tools are readily available and make surveying a snap! What could be better?

Actually, a lot could be better. An online survey tool is like any other tool - In the wrong hands, even with the best of intentions, it can damage. Why is this the case? Performed well, survey research is a skill that delivers accurate and reliable information. Performed poorly, it delivers inaccurate and unreliable information. When the survey report hits your desk, how do you, as the decision maker, know what you're getting? Making decisions based on good information leads to success.

The best way to avoid the "do it yourself surveying" pitfall is to engage research professionals to guide you through the surveying process - The results will be worth the effort. And the cost? Probably not as much as you think, and certainly not as much as the cost of making decisions based on bad information.

So when can you safely perform your own surveys?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I getting a quick "pulse" about a single topic by asking just a few questions?
2. Is my survey target audience small? (A population of 50 or less)
3. Is my audience likely to respond to a survey coming from me?
4. Am I using the survey results simply to verify a decision I'm making based on reliable information I have from other sources?
5. Am I comfortable interpreting the results? (Typically frequency tables and free text comments)

If you can answer, "Yes" to each of these questions, you're probably OK to proceed without help. If your answer is "No" to any of the questions, you should consider taking advantage of a professional's experience.

A professional's experience is very beneficial when your survey project is characterized by any one of these considerations:

• You seek information about more than one topic
• You will ask more than, about, five questions
• Your survey population is larger than 50 people
• Your survey population is often thought of as being segmented by geography, demographics, or organizational structure
  
• You need to ask different questions to subsets of the population based on how they respond to other questions
• You need to be absolutely sure that the questions and their response categories are worded and sequenced perfectly
• Your using the survey results as a primary source of information on which to base key decisions
• You need to be able to compare responses from subsets of the population with one another
• You need to identify the results that are the most important—the statistically significant "gems" of information
• You need to identify trends over time
• You need to be able to interpret free text comments in a defendable, unbiased manner

The bottom line?

In a few instances, performing your own survey research is going to be fine. Yet I think you'll find the quality and credibility you gain from using a professional will deliver much more.

As a parting note, there is one item for which I always recommend using a survey research professional - Questionnaire Composition and Design! The process of creating a series of perfect questions, whether it's five or 50, is far more complicated than generally thought. Question wording and the assigning of appropriate response categories is a science in itself. Placing them in the right order and creating a layout that aids in navigating the survey is equally as challenging. S adly, I review too many surveys that are dysfunctional from the very beginning due to poorly worded questions.

Thanks for reading...

Best regards,

Todd Chavez
Chavez Survey Research, Inc.
www.chavezsurveyresearch.com
(208) 429-8945