These days it seems anybody with a Survey Monkey account is sending surveys all the time. Some are intuitive and enjoyable to take; others not so much. My job currently involves a lot of survey design, but I know that I have made the mistake of designing a survey without a lot of thought, then gotten survey results back and realized that I can’t use them because I didn’t ask the questions in the right way. Does that sound like you?
Don’t let bad surveys happen to good people!
There are best practices that can really improve outcomes and response rates. I recently completed a certificate on Coursera to learn some of these best practices, and wanted to offer up some thoughts.
The Basics
- Seven-course certificate program includes courses on sampling methodology, survey question design, data collection and dealing with missing data.
- It took me about 3-1/2 months to complete the program, working on it maybe 5-10 hours per week but starting and stopping a bit.
- Prerequisites: none.
- It is hosted on Coursera, a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) platform, but offered by a joint program through the University of Michigan and University of Maryland.
- Cost: you can watch course videos for free; to turn in assignments or earn the certificate, it’s $43/month as with most Coursera courses.
Review
I thought this program overall was excellent and found the instructors to be engaging, knowledgeable, and helpful. They used a myriad of real-world examples and spoke from their own experience rather than reading a script. Their explanations of complex topics like sampling methods, alongside well-designed slides, helped me follow the conversation and gave me more value than I would get from merely reading a book.
For my job, I have already gone back many times to reference the Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys course, which was full of tangible steps to improve survey question wording, order, and layout. The classes on data collection and sampling also helped me feel more confident speaking the language of the consultants we work with to implement surveys.
I have only a couple of criticisms of this program. First, I found the capstone project to be somewhat frustrating, because the rubrics on which we were graded (via peer reviews) did not always match the instructions we were given. The assignments often involved spreadsheets but the platform did not always allow us to upload those spreadsheets for grading, leading to a lot of confusion, poorly formatted text documents, and assignment resubmissions. However, the project did give us a chance to exercise what we learned, and it was a good overview once I worked out the kinks.
The Dealing with Missing Data class also had a different instructor than the rest, and I found him to be less engaging and harder to follow. Perhaps the other professors just set a high bar.
The Bottom Line
It seems I get asked to take a survey at least once a week through some e-mail list or group I am a part of, and now I notice more than ever how many of those surveys are neither easy to take nor worded effectively. If your survey results aren’t proving useful to you, you could likely benefit from learning some of these skills. If you are involved in the entire process, from research design through final conclusions, I recommend you take the whole program. If you like to occasionally craft online feedback surveys for a few dozen members of some group you are a part, but don’t need to know about sampling or data collection, you may only need to take the Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys class. Good luck and let me know what you learn!
Nerd on the Bus 