The importance of Surveys

The role and importance of surveys in everyday life:

Perhaps you can relate, I often find myself getting phone calls, sometimes several a day, asking me to complete some new survey on something.Luckily the people that call me are often polite and considerate of my time. I am sure it cannot always be easy for them trying to give a phone survey. Especially dealing with frustrated people disturbing there otherwise "quiet" day. It could be worse, it could be someone trying to sell you another credit card with a low introductory rate!

The road to improving oneself, or one"s company can be simplified by a very simple model known as "PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act. In a nutshell, we improve ourselves by improving the way we think, behave, and respond to various kinds of situations.The PDCA model is a structured way of performing our daily activities, projects, and "todo"s such that we learn from our mistakes. This way we can improve in the future. Surveys are one way of performing the "Check" part of this cycle.

Many companies fall into a "survey" trap and hold the belief that the only way to "check" our actions are to perform a survey. Furthermore, survey questions are not always geared in a way that effectively measures the activity flowing through the PDCA cycle. Nonetheless, surveys continue to be prevalent in our society and will likely to continue to be in the foreseeable future.

If we follow the E+R=OS theory, the question we should ask ourselves would be as follows; What Response (R) can I give to the Event (E) when confronted with a survey. To answer this question we examine two perspectives. First, what can I do when confronted with a survey request, and second, what can I do if asked to prepare/distribute a survey to others?

Part I) Choosing our response about completing a survey.

What if no one ever completed surveys?

In this case, companies performing the survey would make decisions on the products they sell without any input from the customer. It is likely that most of us would be dissatisfied with the product and we would not buy it. We may think to ourselves, "well if they just changed it a bit, it would be a great product!". Suppose you try to make an improved product. The problem is no one else wants to buy your version of the product because he/she has their own ideas on how it should work/behave. You could not find out others ideas because no one completed any surveys.

What if people completed surveys, but don"t pay any attention to the answers they give?

In this situation the company receive false data on what people like, and may make decisions based on this data. We may have a worse situation because now something we are "dead against" may be implemented and even possibly cause harm to others inadvertently.

It might be helpful, to think of a survey as you may think of a vote. Each vote on its own may not seem like much but together your choices are helping to determine future ideas and products that are created.� If you choose not to answer the survey, or worse give answers without really thinking about the questions, do you really have the right to complain about the product?

So you might be thinking to yourself, "Okay, I get it surveys help businesses create products that appeal to the everyday consumer. But, my time is valuable, I can"t be expected to take 20-30 minutes to listen to some guy on the phone with a bunch of questions, especially if it is the middle of my work day." It is likely that at your job you are not paid to answer surveys all day. You can"t afford to stop doing "real work" to complete a survey for some company you may not even have done business with before.

Here are some tips that allow you to contribute survey information without taking up too much of your time.

1) Confirm in advance with the telephone personal the estimated time to complete the survey. If you are busy try to arrange a more convenient time. Let the operator know that if you only have 10 minutes free, then that"s all you can devote, or if you get rushed away ask them to simply keep the results they have collected so far.

2) Ask if the survey is available online. Most online surveys offer the convenience of completing one question at a time throughout the day as you get the chance. This way as you are ruffling through papers to find something, or taking a 5-minute coffee break you can answer a question and move on.

3) Ask if the survey can be mailed to you and completed. Again in this way, you do not have to spend all of your time on the phone, you can then take your time to refer to each question and consider the best answer.

4) Ask for a reward for your time.This is hard for many people to do. Often the company performing the survey has been outsource by a bigger company. The outsourced company is being paid to provide the survey results and you are entitled to a piece of that pie for your time. Often there may be a prize draw you can enter or a small token of $1, $2 for your time. The list below shows some survey sites that offer small rewards or prizes just for completing surveys. You will probably not get rich, but at least you will get something for your time, and you have the pride of knowing that your answers will help companies improve the products they provide to you.

Some Surveys that pay you: Sign up and make a difference :

GlobalTestMarket.com - Earn points per survey and turn your points into CASH, most of the surveys I get come from here !

Lightspeed.com -> Got Opinions? Take an online survey today for a chance to win $5,000. Click Here

SurveyCenter.com -> Offers an instant 'survey' manager that will notify you of new surveys, pays $1 - $2, or more per survey!

5) Ask what the purpose of the survey is.Surveys should never require you to answer questions; you can always choose not to answer specific questions. Pay attention specifically to questions that bare little or no relation to the survey itself. The most common question you may be asked is your total household family income. Most research companies use this information to categorize results by income level. This may seem valuable information to the company performing the survey but often it is not as valuable as might be expected.

6) Have Fun! Once on a survey about the lottery I was asked the question, "How can the lottery help serve you better?", To which I responded, "They could fix the system so that I win more often !" . When the survey is completed, let the operator know how "enjoyable" the survey was to complete, if there were particular questions that seemed ridiculous or pointless, ask the operator to include this comment in the results back to the parent company so that they can create better surveys in the future.

In Part 2, I plan discuss tips for people tasked with writing/implementing surveys and suggest ideas for improving the effectiveness of your survey.