Introduction
Surveys are notoriously unpopular.
Every survey breaks the flow of an event, and if poorly-designed easily becomes a chore.
How often have you gone through a 20-question form, giving the same answer across the board?
The answer is survey design, and also testing.
We strongly recommend that you test your forms prior to sending them out to your audience. Testing the form can help you avoid any errors in the form configuration. This can include:
How the form looks and works, how it is delivered and received, how it is targeted to your audience as well as how your attendees can submit their responses, how the response data is collected, and how you can access or extract the data. The best way for your to test your forms is to send yourself or other people on your team the form to fill in. Remember also that you should reset the form in order to delete any form results that were generated during testing, prior to making your firm accessible to your audience.
Examples of forms
How will you travel to the event? (multiple choice)
What specific outcomes do you expect out of this event? (free test / multiple selection checkbox)
Which issues/topics are you most interested in? (free test / multiple selection checkbox)
Please share any suggestion you may have regarding anything related to the event. (free test)
Example of a full event form (1/2)
What is your overall opinion of the meeting? (very positive, positive, neutral, negative, very negative)
Please indicate how much you agree (or disagree) with the following statements: (strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree)
1. The meeting empowered me with new knowledge;
2. It met my expectations;
3. It provided me with practical information and ideas I could easily put to use;
4. My interest levels stayed high throughout the day.
How would you rate the venue and organization of meeting? (very positive, positive, neutral, negative, very negative)
What other topics would you like to see included in future meetings? (free text)
Do you have any comments or suggestions regarding meeting? (free text)
Example of a full event form (2/2)
optional questions
Depending on the meeting context, it can be a great idea to include an in-depth, self-reflective free text question or two, like:
• What is your main takeaway from this session?
• What do we do well today?
• What are we not doing well or enough of?
• What should we stop doing?
• What should we start doing?
• The 3 key messages you would like to bring back to your own troops:
Example multiple-session survey
How would you rate the different sessions at the meeting? (negative, neutral, positive)
Who was your favourite speaker? (picker with speaker names OR free text)
Do you have any comments or suggestions for the speakers or organizers? (free text)
Example individual session form
How did you like the content and presentation of? (five-star ranking)
Do you have any additional questions or comments for the speaker(s)? (picker with question/comment options AND free text)
Forms and evaluations guidelines
General guidelines
With your SpotMe event app, you have a number of solutions available to make surveys simpler and easier.
• Split up your evaluations into digestible chunks (e.g. push surveys after each coffee break),
• Keep your surveys short and meaningful (6 questions is already quite a bit), Limit the number of rating options to 5 (as in the classic Likert scale),
• Use one, or at most two, free text questions,
• Split up general conference evaluation questions (hotel, food, etc.) throughout your event,
• Don’t send long or important surveys after the closing session to avoid low response rates. A better option is to set aside a few minutes at the start of the last session for feedback.
• Use projectors and screens to remind participants to complete surveys between sessions.
Ratings (stars)
The star rating is a familiar example of the five-step scale, rating satisfaction or quality on a scale from 1 to 5. When using a star rating, explain clearly what participants are rating:
• How did you like the session?
• Please rate the quality of the speaker.
• How would you rate meeting overall?
Ratings (slider and radio buttons)
Using a picker or radio buttons you can also implement other scales, such as the five-step Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree). Clarify how the scale works when you use a scale like this.
Examples:
• How would you rate the different sessions of meeting <name>? (negative, neutral, positive)
• <list sessions>,
• How much do you agree with the following statements about the meeting (strongly agree ... strongly disagree):
• Empowered me with new knowledge,
• Provided me with practical information that I can easily use,
• Kept my interest levels high throughout the day.
Single answer questions (radio buttons)
Radio buttons and pickers are the simplest tool for creating questions that only allow a single response. This is particularly useful for profiling respondents:
• Which country do you represent? (picker list of countries)
• Which sessions have you attended? (list of sessions)
Multiple-choice questions (checkboxes)
Check-boxes are useful for surveys where respondents can select multiple responses, for example:
• Which topics are you most interested in? (list of topics)
• What are your specialities? (list of participant specialities)
• How would you rate <name>meeting overall?
Conditional choice questions
Multiple-choice questions can also be linked with conditional free-text comment boxes:
• Would you rate <name> as a knowledgeable speaker? (yes/no)
If the answer is no, reveal sub question:
• Are there any comments or suggestions you would like to leave for <name>?
Free text answers
Open-ended questions should be meaningful, focused and short to boost response and provide useful answers. Examples:
• What other topics would you like to see in future <name> meetings
• Please share your comments and suggestions for meeting <name>. (optional question)
In the meeting context some more in-depth, self-reflective questions are a good idea:
• What is your main takeaway from this session?
• What do we do well today?
• What are we not doing well or enough of?
• What should we start doing?
• What should we stop doing?
• List three key messages you would like to bring back to your troops.
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