Tips for Using Surveys

Surveying is a great option when you want to get a lot of opinions on a matter. The nice thing about surveying is that a small group of people can actually be quite representative of a much larger group. A survey of thirty first-year students on your campus can give you a good indication of the prevailing opinions and attitudes of the first-year student population. Likewise, if you live in a town of fifty-thousand, you don’t need to survey every resident to get an accurate read on them: a survey of, say, fifty people might get the job done.

When you survey people, there a few tricks to help guarantee you are getting accurate information that will be useful in your paper.

Select a Distribution Medium

You can go as high-tech or as old-school as you want with surveys. You can stand on the corner with a clipboard and ask people to answer a few questions. You can print out your survey and pass it out to your class or your dorm or your work. You can create a Word document and email it to people. You can create a survey widget on Facebook or your website or blog. Or you can make your life easier by using an online survey platform, such as Survey Monkey, Google Forms, or Qualtrics.

I recommend using Google Forms. It's free and easy to use. Once you create your survey, you can share the link for the survey through email or your blog/website. Google Forms will also help you make sense of the survey data you receive by putting the information in pretty charts and graphs. Try doing that with a clipboard and a piece of paper!

Draft Your Questions

I recommend typing a draft of your questions in a Word document before building them into a survey platform. It will be easier to revise your questions and move things around. Once you have a good draft, then copy-and-paste the questions over to the survey platform (e.g. Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Qualtrics, etc.). You can continue revising and editing in the platform. 

Don't Manipulate The Respondents

You might be tempted to word your survey questions in a way that leads to you getting exactly the answers you want—but why? That doesn't "create knowledge." That's not what professors are looking for. Instead, word your questions in a way that elicits honest, useful information.

Take for example this question: "How nasty is the food at the university's dining hall: nasty or really nasty?" This doesn't leave the respondent with much choice but to indicate that the food is nasty, even if they think it tastes good. And then you, as a researcher, are left with unreliable information. Of course your paper is going to overwhelmingly show that the students think the dining hall's food is terrible.

Consider this revision of the question: "On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being completely disgusting and 5 being completely delicious, how would you rate the food at the university's dining hall?"

Now, you really don't know what you'll get until the survey results come in. And hopefully, the results will surprise you. Researchers rarely conduct field research to prove what people already know. They do it to find answers to questions.

Make Sure Your Survey Group is Representative of the General Group

If you are trying to find out how students on campus feel about changes in graduation requirements, don't just survey your first-year writing class. Try to include students of all grade levels and in a variety of majors. Likewise, if you are trying to determine if residents of your town are in favor of a new community center, don't simply survey the people in your neighborhood; survey people from across the town. While a relatively small amount of surveys can be conducted—say, fifty to represent five-thousand people—the target group should have a similar make-up and ratio as the general group. So if twenty percent of the student body are seniors, then make sure twenty percent of the surveys come from seniors. If fifty percent of the town's population live downtown, then make sure fifty percent of your surveys come from downtown residents. 

Inform Respondents of Their Rights and Your Intentions

If you are planning on publishing your research in any way—posting it online, presenting your findings at a research conference, revising it as a letter to the editor—you will need to get approval from your school's IRB (Institutional Research Board). The IRB is set up to make sure all research involving human subjects is conducted legally, ethically, and safely. It may seem odd to guarantee the safety of survey respondents, but that's just the way it is. IRB approval is needed for any field research: surveys, interviews, observation, and experiments. Basically, if you are using a human being as a source of data, you need approval.

If you're not sure if you should seek out IRB approval, ask your professor.

Even if you don't need to seek IRB approval, you should still let your survey respondents know why you are conducting the research, how it will be used in your paper, who will be reading it, and that they are under no obligation to take the survey. Also, make sure they know they can skip questions or withdraw from the survey at anytime without repercussions.

For more information, visit your school's IRB page (I guarantee you that your school has one). They have all sorts of useful templates and advice on conducting effective and ethical surveys.

Using Survey Results in Your Paper

1. The first time you mention the survey, briefly discuss the methodology. 

   • Example: “In a recent survey of 20 undergraduates at Utah Tech University…”

   • Example: “I posted an anonymous 10-question survey to my Facebook page. 39 people ended up taking it.”

   • Example: “To find out whether or not Utah Tech students think President Williams is doing a good job, I administered a short, anonymous survey to my classmates in English 2010.”

2. If you want to go into greater detail about methodology, use a foot note or an appendix. Also consider adding the survey itself as an appendix (i.e. at the back of your paper after the works-cited page).

3. Surveys simply show what people think, but they don’t prove anything.

   • “75% of the participants indicated that Back to the Future was better than Karate Kid.”

   • “9 out of 10 students think President Williams is either doing a 'good job' or a 'great job.'"

4. Consider pointing out the results that were not surprising.

   • “Just as I had expected, only 5% of the participants admitted to hating 80s movies.”

   • “Not surprisingly, 18 of the 20 participants indicated they had never heard of Jersey Shore.”

5. And point out the results that were surprising.

   • “In an interesting turn, however, nearly half of the participants said they had never even seen a movie in a theater.”

   • “I was somewhat surprised to learn that only 10 percent of participants had ever tried beef jerky.”

6. Acknowledge any weaknesses in the survey or the results.

   • “Only 15 students took the survey, so it is impossible to tell if these views are representative of Utah Tech students in general. A larger sampling would be necessary. But for now, the data indicates that students really do prefer Coke over Pepsi.”

   • “There’s a possibility that students misunderstood the question about Game of Thrones since I referred to it as ‘that show’ right after a question about Seinfeld.”

7. If it's your own survey, you aren't required to list it in the works cited or references page.

   • 1. • While it's not required by MLA or APA to list your own survey, I still recommend doing so. Professors often start at the end, by looking at your works cited or references page, before they read and grade your paper. If you list all of your primary sources (such as surveys, experiments, and interviews), then you won't run the risk of your professor miscounting how many sources you actually used. 

If you have a few minutes, I recommend clicking this tutorial survey. As you take the survey, it teaches you the art of creating surveys. 

Note: Some of this information is pulled from the chapter on finding and evaluating sources.