How to Do a Survey

Conducting a Survey

Survey Says ...

Turn on the television, radio or open a newspaper and you will often see the results from a survey.

Gathering information is an important way to help people make decisions about topics of interest.
Surveys can guide choices: what needs changing, where money should be spent, what products to buy, and what opportunites there may be, or lots of other questions you may have at any time.
The best part about surveys is that they can be used to answer any question about any topic

You can survey people (through questionnaires, opinion polls, and so on) or things (like pollution levels in a river, or traffic flow).

Four Steps

Here are four steps to a successful survey:

Step one: create the questions
Step two: ask the questions
Step three: tally the results
Step four: present the results

Let us look at each step in more detail ...

Step One: Create the Questions

First, decide what you want to find out.

What questions do you want answered?

Some surveys ask simple questions such as:

"What is your favorite color?"

Other times the questions may be more complex such as:

"Which roads have the worst traffic conditions?"

Simple Surveys

When doing a simple survey, you can use tally marks to show each person’s answer:

Be creative in how people respond. It makes it more fun for both you and your respondents (the people answering the question).

Example:What is your favorite color?

Have them write down their favorite color on a piece of paper and drop it in a fish bowl.

Then, put all of the pieces of paper into piles and count them.

To help you make a good Questionnaire see Survey Questions.

Step Two: Asking The Questions

Now you have your questions, go out and ask them! But who to ask?

If you survey everyone in a group, it’s called a Census.

If the group is too large, you can ask a smaller part of it, called a Sample.

When you are sampling, choose carefully who to ask.

People

To be a good sample, each person should be chosen randomly

If you only ask people who look friendly, you will only know what friendly people think!

If you go to the swimming pool and ask people "Can you swim?" you will get a biased answer ... maybe even 100% will say "Yes"

And the surveys where people are asked to respond are not very accurate, because only certain types of people take the time to answer.

So be careful not to bias your survey. Try to choose randomly.

Example: Favorite colors at school

You want to know the favorite colors at your school but can’t ask everyone.

Solution: Choose 50 people at random:

stand at the gate and ask the next person who arrives each time
or choose people randomly from a list and then go and find them!
or you could choose every 5th person

Your results will hopefully be nearly as good as if you asked everyone.

If someone doesn't want to answer, record "no answer" and mention how many refused in your report.

After completing a sample survey, use the information to make a prediction about the larger group.

Your results are better when you ask more people.

Example: nationwide opinion polls survey about 2,000 people, and the results are nearly as good (within about 1%) as asking everyone.

But they sometimes get voting wrong, because people change their mind when actually voting.

In the same way the opinion "yes I would buy this product" may not mean they actually will buy it.

Step Three: Tally the Results

Now you have finished asking questions it is time to tally (add up) the results.

This usually involves lots of paperwork and computer work (spreadsheets are useful!)

Example: For "favorite colors of my class" you can simply write tally marks like this (every fifth mark crosses the previous 4 marks, so you can easily see groups of 5):

Preferred color Tally

Step Four: Presenting the Results

Now you have your results, you will want to show them to other people in the best possible way.

We have written a special page called Showing the Results of a Survey, but here is a quick summary:

Tables

Tables are a clear way to report information. Include a title so readers know what your data shows:

Yellow	Red	Blue	Green	Pink
**Table: The Favorite Colors of My Class**
4	5	6	1	4

Statistics

You can summarize results using statistics, such as mean or standard deviation

Example: you have lots of information about how long it takes people to get to school but it may be simpler just to present a summary such as:

Shortest Journey: 3 minutes
Average Journey: 22 minutes
Longest Journey: 58 minutes

Graphs

But nothing makes a report look better than a nice graph or chart.

Use Data Graphs (Bar, Line and Pie) to make them.

Example Survey Question: What is your favorite color?

Favorite Colors of My Class

Have fun asking questions!