Define Survey Goals
What is the aim of your survey research? Is your company trying to diagnose
decreasing sales? Are you an organization concerned about dwindling
membership?
Defining the survey goal sharpens the focus on what you are trying to
achieve and prevents future problems of survey ambiguity. Knowing exactly
what information you need also helps Administrators craft better questions
that hone-in on the issue at hand and allows survey participants to give
higher-quality responses.
Example 1:
Company XYZ is mostly certain their employees are content with job
security and pay equity, but aren’t sure how they feel on issues like
professional development, personal accomplishment, work/life balance, and
the ability to influence the direction of the company.
Should company XYZ conduct an employee satisfaction or an employee
engagement survey? The answer would be “employee engagement”, because those
latter issues pertain to going above and beyond being merely committed to a
company. Employee engagement measures the extent to which employees become
advocates for their organization.
Example 2:
Company ABC is administering a customer satisfaction survey. ABC needs to define what they are concerned about. Is it a particular area of customer service, such as wait times to reach a representative, or is it a composite of several different areas that we are trying to gain insight on?
