Mastering Survey Creation: Designing Engaging Surveys

Making a survey can seem like a hard thing to do, but if you follow these steps it should be fairly easy for you to make surveys about anything! I have been learning and perfecting the different ways to make surveys and I found the best way to get the information you want, in the format you want it. Surveys help obtain information about any topic and can be given to a certain set of people to make the data specific to them. Surveys can be used in many different ways to perform many different things like reviews, research, satisfaction rate, information about certain groups and more! Some advantages to surveys are they collect large amounts of data, it is usually cheaper than other methods, and can tell what people really think. Some disadvantages are low response rates, not enough content for people, and misleading questions that confuse people. If you use my method of surveys you are sure to get all of these advantages, and hopefully none of the disadvantages for a successful survey!

Supplies

A laptop

Internet

Account on Survey Monkey

Step 1: Setting Up Survey

Open an internet browser of your choice and type in the search bar https://www.surveymonkey.com/.

Click the gold button that says “Sign up for Free” in the top right corner. Enter your email and create a memorable password to make an account. Click create a survey on the top right corner.
Pick start from scratch so you can completely customize it for any topic of survey you want on the left side bar.
Write your survey name. Make sure it is simple and direct. Then pick your survey category. Hit the green “create survey” button.

Step 2: Writing Questions

Go to the middle page where it says Q1 (question 1) and enter your question. Questions need to be set up in a logical orderly way. They should all flow together and not be going back and forth. You need to make sure that your questions are simple and clear. It is so easy for people to misinterpret questions or not understand them at all, then your results would be biased.

Making your questions clear means that you should not be using very difficult words or phrases. You want to write as you are talking to a ten year old but still very professionally. Do not write questions that could be biased, like people's political or economic views, unless that is what the survey is about.
Make sure your questions are neutral and do not have wiggle room for people to put their own opinions.
Lastly, make sure to have a variety of different questions to get multiple different viewpoints. You do not want your questions to be repetitive, make them all unique for substantial different responses.

Step 3: Picking Response Types

Choosing the right response type for your questions can make the survey outcome very different. It is really important you understand what you want out of the questions you're asking and what response type would benefit it most. It depends on details, data, external information, and the person's own information.

If you are thinking of choosing a multiple choice response type/checkbox/dropdown, there are only a few answers you are looking for. This is the most specific and clear answers you can have. This gives the participant less options and the giver of the survey less range in answers. The cons of doing multiple choice is that it does not cover all answers, and can make people choose options they do not agree with.
If you are thinking of choosing a ranking response type, then you are asking the participants to rate in order of their preference. This helps you differ what is most and least important to most participants and which answers are in the middle ground. This is useful if you want them to have an opinion on each answer.
If you are thinking of doing a comment box, then you really want to know each participant's opinion on your questions. This gives you the most data and the most range of data, because you will never have the same exact response. However, this makes it very time consuming for going through results and comparing them.
If you are thinking of doing a “slider” type of response, then you can gauge where people feel on a certain scale. Participants can choose to be all the way on one side, 50/50, 75/25, or anything they want. This helps you understand where people stand on this topic overall. It helps you understand how the participants feel specifically, so it is an easy response type, but gives you a lot of information.

Step 4: Designing Survey

Once you have figured out your questions and response type, it is now time to design your final survey! To design it, click on the “style” button on the top gray bar.

I usually choose a theme to make it easier for myself, but you do not have to. You can click settings and customize it.
You can pick your logo, footer, fonts, background, layout, and colors! Have fun with this part, make it your own!
Make sure that your final design on your survey reflects what your survey is. If you are asking medical type questions you do not want to have a bunch of colors, instead keep it clean and neutral colors. On the other hand, if you are asking questions about amusement parks, you should definitely make it more fun and bold!

Step 5: Finalizing Survey

When you are happy with the way things look, your questions, and response types, you are ready to publish and send to participants!

You will hit the green button at the top right that says “preview survey”. Look over to finalize your survey the way participants will see it. When you are ready, click “next”.
Choose to "send a survey your way". I would choose to share a survey link because that is the easiest, but you can choose anyway you feel comfortable collecting responses. Click on the green button that says “copy”, copy your link and send it to your participants!