This article is a continuation of Monday’s post. If you missed that one, I encourage you to go back and read it to be sure we are on the same page.

The Five Basic Survey Research Steps

Survey Research can be broken down into 5 simple steps. That is to say, breaking the process down is  simple. How difficult the individual steps are depends on the size and scope of your project. Try to take each step individually. This will keep you from getting overwhelmed and “stuck in the mud”.

The posts to follow will each address one of these steps. Later we can delve a little deeper into each step to flesh out each area.

The five steps of a survey research project are: (click to read posts) 

1. Create
2. Deploy
3. Analyze
4. Take Action
5. Re-Survey

Each step has its intricacies and pitfalls, but taken individually they are each easy to accomplish. Once again, depending on your particular situation you may want to consider hiring a professional survey research company.

Expanding these steps we find several sub-steps.

1. Create

• Objectives
• Question Development
• Design the Survey Instrument

2. Deploy

• Online
• Mail
• Telephone
• In Person

3. Analyze

• Reporting
• Benchmarking
• Statistical Analysis

4. Take Action

• Action Plans
• Execution of Action Plans

5. Re-Survey

• Measure Progress
• Adjust Action Plans
  

You should not proceed to the next step without fulfilling the requirements of the prior step. For instance, part of the Create process (Step 1) is to determine the objectives of your research. Your survey results may not be of any value if you do not correctly identify these research objectives.

I will post an article on each of the steps individually in the interest of keeping these articles nicely compartmentalized.

I will also address customer surveys and employee surveys separately, but I wanted to cover all the basics, define some terms, and not move too fast.

Please stay tuned.

If you enjoyed reading this, be sure to follow the rest of the series.

Shawn Devlin
Marketing Analyst
National Business Research Institute
www.nbrii.com

Part One - Survey Intro

Part Two - Survey Basics (This One)

Part Three - Creating the Survey

Part Four - Deploying the Survey

Part Five - Analyzing the Data

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