Why conducting a survey

Respondents are more likely to provide open and honest feedback in a more private survey method. Methods such as online surveys , paper surveys, or mobile surveys are more private and less intimidating than face-to-face survey interviews or telephone surveys. Evoke discussion. Give your survey respondents an opportunity to discuss important key topics.

Communicate with your respondents about your survey topic. This allows you to dig deeper into your survey, and can incite topics related to your survey within a broader perspective.

Base decisions on objective information. Conducting surveys is an unbiased approach to decision-making. You can collect unbiased survey data and develop sensible decisions based on analyzed results.

By analyzing results, you can immediately address topics of importance, rather than waste time and valuable resources on areas of little or no concern. Compare results. Surveys results provide a snapshot of the attitudes and behaviors — including thoughts, opinions, and comments — about your target survey population. Once the data has been gathered, what will be done with it?

The information can be divided by topic as well with one whitepaper covering motivation for migrating to the cloud and another one discussing cost issues related to the migration. Any text should include visuals such as charts and graphs that clearly display the most significant results.

On the marketing side, the conclusions ascertained can be used for such business decisions as product introductions, pricing, messaging and branding. The information cannot totally direct decisions, but must be combined with overall company direction and market needs. If designed properly and clear in its purpose, survey research is a very valuable tool for gathering information about customers, attitudes, and market drivers and challenges.

Goals and questions must be clear to avoid being led down the wrong path. Whether one receives expected responses and trends or not, conducting a survey can be very informative and useful for business and marketing strategy. Interested in our content marketing services? Hirschman points out that in general people and businesses rely on exit to identify an issue — for example, do we have fewer customers than last month?

But by the time you see this, it may be too late. Exit is a lagging indicator. Organizations of all stripes succeed when encouraging voice over exit. In other words, voice is your canary in a coal mine. Back to Surveys Products Surveys. Specialized products. View all products. Survey Types. People Powered Data for business. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Sitzia J. How valid and reliable are patient satisfaction data? An analysis of studies. Int J Qual Health Care ; — Bowling A. Research Methods in Health.

Investigating Health and Health Services. Arber S. Designing samples. In: Gilbert N, ed. Researching Social Life. Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany. Department of Health, England. French K. Methodological considerations in hospital patient opinion surveys. Int J Nurs Stud ; 7 — Sitzia J, Wood N. Response rate in patient satisfaction research: an analysis of published studies. Increasing response rates to postal questionnaires: systematic review.

Br Med J ; Wright DB. Making friends with our data: improving how statistical results are reported. Br J Educ Psychol ; in press. Wright DB, Kelley K. Analysing and reporting data. In: Michie S, Abraham C, eds.

Health Psychology in Practice. Davey Smith G, Ebrahim S. Data dredging, bias, or confounding. Br Med J ; — London: Chapman and Hall, Sportscience, New Zealand. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

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Volume Article Contents Abstract. What is survey research? Advantages and disadvantages of survey research. Essential steps in survey research. Research methods.

Designing the research tool. Sample and sampling. Data collection. Data analysis. Good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research.

Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Abstract Survey research is sometimes regarded as an easy research approach. Int J Qual Health Care. Int J Nurs Stud.