Writing Effective Surveys - Scaling
Part of gathering useful statistics is making effective surveys. Many of your surveys will include questions that ask the user to scale something from 1-5.
The first mistake people will make is assuming the user thinks 1 is the worst and 5 is the best. If you don’t say “Scale these from 1 to 5 in order of importance - 1 being the least important and 5 being the most important.” However, what is wrong with this? Someone may not see a question as important to him/her, but still rank it high because it is important to others. This causes error. How do you prevent this? You start off with “Scale these items from 1 to 5 in order of importance to you (1 being the least important). You can use the numbers more than once.“ The last part will save you some breath - people WILL ask if they can use each number more than once… trust me.
Okay, so you have the directions down. How do you write the questions? Another common mistake people will make is creating totally off-the-wall questions. Let’s show an example:
Scale these items from 1 to 5 in order of importance to you (1 being the least important). You can use the numbers more than once.
__ Does mountain biking interest you?
__ How often you ride your bike
__ How many bikes you own
None of this is accurate. The first one is a YES or NO question. The second one can be answered with some multiple choice set, and the last one can be answered with a number. There are so many people who insist on maintaining methodology in surveys when it is totally unnecessary. You don’t have to make the whole survey a scaling survey!
Here’s another mistake people will make - creating VAGUE questions:
Scale these items from 1 to 5 in order of importance to you (1 being the least important). You can use the numbers more than once.
__ Method of transportation
__ Power of bike
__ Cost
These are WAY too vague. You may think that making a list of questions like this simplifies things, when all it does it confuse people!
Method of transportation? What do they mean? How I get to a biking trail? What bike I ride? If I even RIDE a bike?
Power of bike? In what sense?
Cost? Of what!?
If your surveys aren’t specific and don’t answer your exact questions, they will output incorrect information. Scaling surveys are some of the hardest to build. For each item on your survey, repeat it in your head:
__ The cost of mountain bike brakes
The cost of mountain bike brakes are not very important to me.
If you can clearly answer each question and get the EXACT answers you are looking for, you have successfully created a scaling survey.
Tags: bikes, biking_trail, choice_set, effective_surveys, first_mistake, how_to_make_a_survey, making_a_survey, making_surveys, methodology, mountain_biking, multiple_choice, scaling, scaling_survey, scaling_surveys, statistics, vague_questionsRelated Stories
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