How To: Create a Survey About an Important Issue

It may sound a little lame, but if you choose your topic well, surveys can be very powerful and even increase awareness. And once you are done, you have something to show for your work. Your survey results give you information about what people think and believe about specific issues/topics, and information is power.

1. Choose the issue: Listen to what bothers people at your school or in your community. Or choose a topic that you think people should know about. It doesn't matter what you choose as long as you are specific. Just be sure you know what information you want to gather from the survey.
2. Check out some sample surveys Taking some surveys yourself may help you devise a great one when it's your time. Check out these surveys:
   • Canadian Youth Smoking Survey
   • College Voting Survey
3. Choose the type of survey: There are two types of surveys: Questionnaires and Interviews:
   
   

   Type of Survey	Questionnaires	Interviews
   Explanation and Examples.	Specific questions with a choice of answers. Example: Do you think I am Cute? yes no maybe	Less specific questions that allow people to respond freely. Example: Why do you think Emily is cute? What is your favorite thing about Emily? On a scale from 1-10 how awesome are Emily's clothes? Why?
   Why it is good	Can be handed out to people and collected later. It doesn’t need a lot of people to do. It is easy to summarize results.	Involves people more. Allows range of answers to be recorded. Insures responses on all surveys taken.
   Why it is not so good	People might fill it out as a joke. Questions might be confusing (and people won’t fill it out)	Takes more people and more time. Harder to summarize general responses.

4. Pick some people: Get friends, classmates, teachers, or even parents to help you create and get results for your survey. Be sure to choose people that you can work with and talk to.
5. Make the thing: Here are some tips on creating the survey:
   • Keep the survey as short as possible, asking only those questions that will provide the information you need.
   • Use a casual, conversational style, making the questions easy for almost anyone to understand.
   • Use multiple-choice questions whenever possible. This will reduce the time it takes to complete the questionnaire.
   • Structure the survey so that the questions follow a logical order – i.e. from general to specific.
   • Start with information about who is taking the survey. Example:
   • Describe yourself: Teacher – Student – Staff -- Other
   • If you answered student, what grade are you in: 5-7 8-10 11-12
   • Questions should allow people to choose what they think and not tell them what to think.
     • Bad question:Why does lunch on Monday stink so much?
     • Good question: On a scale from 1-10 (10 being tasty, 1 being not so tasty), rate lunch on: Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday
6. The questions: There are various types of questions you can use:
• Multiple choice questions with three to five possible answers given. (No more than five.)
• Ranking scale questions:
  

  1	2	3	4	5
  strongly disagree	disagree	neutral	agree	strongly agree

• Opinion and awareness:
  • On a scale from one to ten (ten being the highest), how much do you know about...
  • On a scale from one to ten (ten being interested, one being really bored), what do you think about...
  • Note: When using the rating scale, use the same rating scale throughout your survey for questions requiring the respondent to rate items. For example, if the scale is from one to five, with five being the most positive, keep that same scale for all of the questions requiring a rating.
7. Before you go live Test the survey on a few people. Conduct an interview with each of those respondents after he or she completes the survey to determine if your questions were easily understood and easy to answer. Let the recipient know what you’re trying to accomplish with the survey and how valued his or her response is.
8. Distribute your survey Distribute your survey in school or in your community. Get the results and summarize them in one page. This is easy if you tally or compile your results for each question and present it on a spread sheet or table.
9. What's next? Bring your survey to a school board or town hall meeting (depending on what your survey is about) and share your results with people there. And don't forget to tell Do Something about it!