ATD’s TD Magazine: Survey Says…Improve your survey design process.

Shamsy, J.A. (2021, June 1). Survey says…Improve your survey design process. TD Magazine. https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/survey-says

The Challenge   

A few years ago, I did some pro-bono consulting work for Female Aviators Sticking Together (FAST) – a non profit organization seeking to elevate, encourage, and empower female pilots. I helped them edit a membership survey collecting member data including member location, pilot certificates held, communication preferences, outreach desires, etc.

That work solidified my belief that it is important to engage in a systematic and systemic survey design process. This process starts with identifying what type of data you will need to collect and why. By identifying this before creating a survey, you can improve data quality resulting in more effective outcomes downstream. There is alignment between the survey items (the statement/question and response scale), desired data, and actual data collected.

What I Learned

Editing!

Every article that I write is an opportunity for me to hone my writing skills and receive valuable feedback.

One concept that I find that students in the survey design course that I teach struggle with is wanting to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) before the planning.

However, in survey design, planning is key to creating an effective product. You must have a clear idea of what you are trying to obtain (in terms of data) and what you are going to do with it before you can begin to think of constructing survey statements/questions and adding in response scales (in the case of closed-ended survey items). It is also an iterative process and you will most likely need to circle back and make some adjustments. However, this time in planning is well spent. Otherwise, you may be disheartened after spending countless hours designing and administering a survey only to have lots of data that doesn’t really tell you anything.

The editors at ATD were very generous with their time and feedback to bring the article to publication. A highly rewarding process!