As a freelance writer, I’ve been conducting a number of surveys lately for articles, presentations and marketing analyses. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned in the past two weeks.

1. Really take time to think surveys out
   When I first started writing these surveys, I included a lot of open-ended questions. When the survey was over, I had to figure out a way to quantify the responses to these questions so they’d be useful in the statistics. For example, I would give a text box for the answer to “What’s your favorite movie candy?” People would write in “Goobers” and “Gobers” and “Goebers.” Then I’d have to go back and determine what they meant and do the tabulations by hand. If I had simply created a list of typical movie candy for them to choose, most of the stats would be taken care of automatically. Then I could have created an “other” category to cover really unusual responses.
2. Watch early results and make modifications immediately
   A couple of times I did not provide enough choices for the participants. For example, I had five ranges of percentages, and the top range said “above 25 percent.” Everyone clicked that choice, which told me that the question was useless as it was. If I had modified the survey as soon as I saw 2-3 respondents’ answers, I would have had the chance to make the question mean something.
3. Use logic to make the survey relevant
   The survey service I use allows you to personalize surveys a bit. For example, if people respond that they don’t have a home office, I can let them skip the rest of the questions related to the home office instead of making them click “N/A” for each question.
4. Group questions by topic
   I took a customer service survey the other day, and the questions kept jumping back and forth from the site graphics to product satisfaction. I try to ask a series of questions on one topic before moving on to the next.
5. Tell respondents how long it will take to complete
   These days I don’t even start a survey if I don’t know how long it will take me. I really like those that show you percentage completed or number of questions. And don’t lie or guess about how long it will take. Send it out to someone and ask him or her to let you know how long it took to get through. You’d hate to get into the position of advertising a 45-minute sales presentation that actually takes three hours (time-share, anyone?).