How Do I Choose the Best Evaluation Survey?

People use evaluation surveys when they want to learn about perceived successes and failures of projects or processes. For instance, teachers might distribute evaluation surveys to students at the end of a course to find out what each students liked and didn't like about teaching styles and course material. Marketing professionals, on the other hand, might distribute evaluation surveys to clients to learn whether they are satisfied with certain services or products. To choose the best evaluation survey, it is important to consider factors such as the objectives you hope to reach with a survey, the kinds of people who might take a survey and the format of questions on the survey. It also is important to consider the modes by which a survey might be distributed, completed and returned.

When choosing the best evaluation survey, it is essential to consider what you would like to learn from it. One of the most common mistakes that people make when developing surveys is that they write questions that help them to gather information, eve if the information that they gain is not relevant. For example, if you want to know how your product can be improved, it would not be effective for you to write a survey that includes questions in which clients rate their levels of satisfaction. Instead, you might want to ask specifically what your clients liked and didn't like. Along with getting the right information, it also is important that you have some idea about how you plan on using the information.

Another important factor to consider when choosing an evaluation survey is who might take the survey. In some cases, the answer might be obvious, such as with classroom evaluations. An instructor who wants his or her students' opinions about a class certainly should distribute surveys to all of the students. If a marketing professional is concerned about levels of satisfaction among certain target demographics, on the other hand, the best evaluation survey might be one that is distributed only to people who live in a certain area or are in a certain income bracket.

When choosing the best evaluation survey, you also should consider which kinds of questions might be on it. If you want to learn about levels of satisfaction, it might be a good idea to have closed-ended questions that ask people to rate their experiences on scales, such as 1 to 10. Individuals who are interested in hearing people's explanations and ideas for improvement might benefit from open-ended questions that allow users to more fully express their thoughts.