The 15 Question Survey

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Yesterday we spoke about a short survey. Many times we do need to know a lot more information about those we serve and yes, even though 15 questions may not give you all the answers - they are still a lot of questions to get a recipient to answer. Today's approach is how to get more people to provide answers and also, how to make sure that your answers are relevant. You don't want to put them to sleep.


Your survey should be in three parts.

I - Start with an incentive, this gets their attention. Follow this with an assurance of the privacy of responses and the advantages to the recipient to complete the survey. Some things that you could say include:

- By knowing me better you will provide more relevance,
- Show a couple of instances where feedback has helped, &
- Give them an invitation to join your inner circle.

II - Next start by asking them open ended and opinion questions. Open questions include text box answers where you are soliciting the recipients freeform feedback. Opinion questions allow the recipient to rank things that you have presented. Remember, open works better before opinion.

III - Close out the survey by requesting people for their personal information. This includes things like age / income / family / etc. Your last question should be one where you request the recipient to provide their contact information (keep this part optional).

I have seen this approach drive very high responses, sometimes even more than the three question survey.