It seems to me that the word ‘survey’ is often clumped together with other words like ‘mother-in law’,‘cane toad’, ‘pestilence’ and maybe even ‘microsoft’. For all that we hate surveys they are still a powerful way of getting things done. There is definitely a science and an art involved in producing a ‘good’ survey.

For anyone putting together a survey, one thing you will need to do is design your questions. The language that you use can have a big impact on the response rates which you get on your survey and also how ‘threatened’ people may feel answering your survey questions. Here is a humourous example (albeit adapted from “Asking questions”) of some different ways to ask the question: “Did you kill your pet cat?”.

A. The casual approach:

“Did you happen to kill your pet cat?”

B. The numbered card/option approach:

“Please choose from the options below which correspond to what became of your pet cat”

(1) Natural death    (2) I killed him    (3) Other (what?)

C. The Everybody approach:

“As you know, many people have been killing their pet cats these days. Did you happen to kill yours?”

D. The “Other People” approach:

(1) “Do you know any people who have murdered their pet cats?”

(2) “How about yourself?”