Define Survey Goals

What is the aim of your survey research? Is your company trying to diagnose decreasing sales? Are you an organization concerned about dwindling membership?

Defining the survey goal sharpens the focus on what you are trying to achieve and prevents future problems of survey ambiguity. Knowing exactly what information you need also helps Administrators craft better questions that hone-in on the issue at hand and allows survey participants to give higher-quality responses.

Example 1:

Company XYZ is mostly certain their employees are content with job security and pay equity, but aren’t sure how they feel on issues like professional development, personal accomplishment, work/life balance, and the ability to influence the direction of the company.

Should company XYZ conduct an employee satisfaction or an employee engagement survey? The answer would be “employee engagement”, because those latter issues pertain to going above and beyond being merely committed to a company. Employee engagement measures the extent to which employees become advocates for their organization.

Example 2:

Company ABC is administering a customer satisfaction survey. ABC needs to define what they are concerned about. Is it a particular area of customer service, such as wait times to reach a representative, or is it a composite of several different areas that we are trying to gain insight on?