Good ways to get information from your survey

If you have just completed a survey and you are ready to learn the results, do you know what to do to analyze your results? And how could you get the most out of your survey? Now it is time to write a summary. Survey summaries are useful tools in communicating important survey data in a simplified manner with various members of an executive team. It’s a powerful tool to archive the original goal of the survey.

First you should collect all of the data. This could include but is not limited to the survey questions, survey answers and profiles of the general individuals being surveyed. It’s very important to see that there was a complete understanding of the questions. This can be done by looking to see if there were inconsistent answers by the survey participants, comments regarding questions about the survey or many questions left blank. Try to find out what the survey indicates are the areas that need improvement. Is there a question where the majority of participants rated it as "low" or "unsatisfactory"? It’s very important to find out what areas are doing well. This will be indicated by consistently high marks by survey takers. Take note. Tactics used in these areas that are doing well may be used to improve low-scoring areas later. You should carry the notebook with you all the time because of the nature of the survey. Maybe you need it some times.

It’s vital to find out which area is in need of improvement. You should try to find out what areas are breaking down. Questions of the breaking down areas are more specific. If half or the majority of participants have given a mid-level scores to a particular area, that may be because the area is in need of improvement. You should work it out if there was a unified feeling about a certain topic amongst surveyors of similar gender, religious, age, geographic, economic or ethnic group. If the results were bad, how could this group’s needs be met best? If the results were good, how the feeling could be spread to other groups of people. However, you should not be dismal for the bad result. After all, it’s just a survey. We just get the useful information from the survey. That’s our unique object.