Page Comparison

What should the end product of the project be?  From whom, and why do you plan to collect data?

• Clear (piloted) questions help avoid ambiguity, and are essential for getting good dataBegin with the end in mind: decide exactly what data you wish to collect, and in what form. You should seek this, and no more.
• Consider a few demographics - age, academic class, etc - to get a sense of how different groups respond.  This provides social context for your data.
• But avoid too many questions - ask only what’s useful to your purposes.
• Clear (piloted) questions help avoid ambiguity, and are essential for getting good data.
• Learn to use conditional logic to avoid asking irrelevant questions.
• Multiple choice questions supply the best data for math calculations.  But be careful that your answer choices encompass all that's appropriate and not redundant.

• How motivated will respondents be to fill out your form? Do you have an incentive plan?

 How will form reach respondents?

• How will respondents get to or receive access to your form?

• How strict are your anonymity requirements?

• Do you want to send follow-up communication, or at least track participation?

• How many respondents do you seek or anticipate?  What distribution regime can you realistically manage?

 Budget time to learn tools for all stages/steps.  Learn them before making survey form available to respondents.

• Learn all features of your survey tool that you’ll need.

• Learn to use software (and math functions) outside the survey application, which you need for calculations and reporting.

 Pilot!

• Have sample similar to respondents provide feedback on form experience: accessing form, form UX, question clarity and appropriateness.

• Use dummy data to work through all calculations and reporting. 

• Generate a mock product before the real product.  

• Then you know what to do with the real data and more importantly, that you’re collecting the correct data for your purposes.   

 Responsibilities

• What full-time employee(s) will be employed on the project?
• Keep a journal or documentation for the project.