پنج سوال اساسی در روش تحقیق

پنج سوال اساسی در تحقیقات زمینه یابی

How do you want to ask? If you're reading this, you're probably going to send out an online survey. Check. You're ahead already.

Why do you want to ask? Hands down, the most important step is figuring out what you actually want to know. Get clear on your objectives. For example, stay away from vague goals like measuring "satisfaction." What do you mean by satisfaction? Do you want to know if your public awareness campaign was engaging and fun? Or, was it informational? Or persuasive? Not only will a clear sense of the feedback you want up front help you to analyze your data when you get it back; it will also make your actual survey questions clearer and simpler.

Who do you want to ask? Think about the folks you want to reach. Survey respondents should be a sample of a population. A population is the entire set of people who you want to ask. For example, American citizens, or non-profit workers in Texas, or teenage internet users in New York City. Your sample is the portion of that bigger population that actually ends up taking your survey. Figuring out who you want to answer your questions is directly related to why yoursquo;re asking in the first place.

When do you want to ask? Different strokes for different folks. Depending on who yoursquo;re targeting, yoursquo;ll want to send out invitations at different points of the week, and leave surveys open for different amounts of timemdash;especially if you want to get more responses. Closing a survey too quickly can frustrate people who tried to respond, and exclude people who are just a little slower at getting around to things.

What do you want to ask? First, keep your questions simple, clear, and concise. If yoursquo;re not sure that your questions are easy enough to understand, test them out on a friend or someone whorsquo;s not familiar with your particular industry to make sure the questions are comprehensive. Try not to use more than seven answer choices for any given question. Finally, remember to label the answer choices.