Published: 11/14/2024
Diana Wohldmann
VP, Key Accounts, Dynata
Growing up in a home with parents that enforced old fashioned rules to abide by and navigating a career in sales, I still point to Emily Post’s book on Etiquette first published in 1922 to navigate proper manners and etiquette in social, professional and family interactions. This may sound outdated, but in the world we are living in today where everything is so rushed and often very impersonal, it’s refreshing to get back to the basics on valuing the importance of courtesy, consideration and respect for others.
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In today’s modern world we often forget about proper etiquette, and it is something overlooked especially on online forums when connecting with your target audience you are seeking insights from. We often find ourselves rushed to answer that email as quickly as possible, sending impersonal text messages and rushing to answer the next request we come across. Our means of communication have become much more about responding quickly than providing something thoughtful, empathetic or kind. With technology making it easier than ever to reach audiences at scale and the demands of your business needing insights quickly before the next trend emerges, you can find yourself approaching your survey draft in a rushed manner. This often results in a breakdown in what you want to communicate to your respondent and it leaves you with incomplete responses or worse you get skewed data that doesn’t tease out the insights you need to grow your business.
To pay homage to Emily Post, I crafted some quick bullets on how to craft a survey to best generagte meaningful insights. Similar to Emily Post, this guide emphasizes the value of thoughtful, empathetic and respectful communication to your respondent.
When applied to survey design, the principles from Emily Post are just as relevant.
Dynata’s Guide to Crafting a Survey to Generate Meaningful Insights
- Respecting Time
- Similar to what Emily Post attests to in her guide to etiquette, being punctual and considerate of others time is critical when designing your survey. In today’s modern world, it is challenging to expect a respondent to stay engaged in your survey for longer than 15 minutes as industry standard. It is best to be concise and focused on key topics of mutual interest between you and the respondent. We live in a fast-paced world and to maintain quality data, it is encouraged to keep the survey length at or below 10 minutes.
- Ways you can ensure respect for someone’s time is to partner with a vendor that can help you target the right audience to save you time on screening in the right audience. This all starts with developing a good screener of qualifying questions with you research partner and when partnering with someone like Dynata that owns their own panel of respondents, we can get very granular on how many people you can reach that fit the profile you are looking for.
- Consideration for the Audience
- Making people feel at ease and presenting relevant questions to your audience creates an experience where respondents feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions.
- By partnering with your research vendor, they can help accomplish this goal by implementing good screening questions early on, targeting the right audience by leveraging profiling information and quality control processes to ensure your survey has correct programming logic.
- Gratitude
- Following up with thanking the respondent for their efforts and incentivizing them for their time will go a long way in terms of getting meaningful feedback in their next survey. Finding a partner that can set these expectations early on will set you up for success.
- Following up with thanking the respondent for their efforts and incentivizing them for their time will go a long way in terms of getting meaningful feedback in their next survey. Finding a partner that can set these expectations early on will set you up for success.
In sum, in our fast-paced digital world we need to maintain the human element behind every interaction and be empathetic to the respondents you are seeking to build a relationship with to share their thoughts and opinions with you. These key elements weaved throughout and partnering with a leader in market research will set you up for success when fielding your next survey.