The design phase of our process is generally accomplished through a Strategic Survey Design Workshop.  The purpose of the workshop is to jumpstart the design of the survey.  It covers Steps 1 and 2, described below.  For a more detailed description of the workshop click here.

Step 1: Define or Refine Strategic Questions

When developing a new survey for a client, we start by asking several important questions. “Why are you doing this survey? When this project is over, and you are holding the results in your hands, what will they look like? What do you need to get out of this project in order to make your company better? What do you need to know to make better decisions?”

The answers to those questions help us define the strategic issues that are driving the survey project. This process typically includes a meeting with senior executives of the company, which provides a forum for coming to consensus on the strategic questions to be answered by the survey.

Examples of strategic questions might be:

	What factors are contributing to turnover?
	How well do our employees understand and embrace our mission statement?
	What factors have the strongest negative affect on customer retention?

 

 
Step 2: Determine What to Measure

After the strategic questions have been identified, we set the stage for actionable solutions by asking, “What behaviors and attitudes do you need to measure in order to get the answers to those questions?” This helps us to select categories of questions that should be included in your survey in order to get the answers to your strategic questions. We have over 500 field-tested specific questions in our catalogs which are divided into more than 40 categories. We start with a category and look for questions that will elicit the information needed by our clients. If the catalog questions are a perfect fit, we can use them as is. We can also tweak a catalog question, or write new ones from scratch.

Once the categories and questions have been selected, we may build indices to quantify particular areas of interest that will illuminate the results.  We also help our clients decide what demographic information they will need in order to break down the survey results in meaningful ways.

For more information on demographics, questions, categories or indices, click on one of the links on the left.