Reviewing Tool Step 3: Survey Planner
This Survey Planner is designed to support colleges to create student and staff surveys with the purpose of gathering feedback on college academic skills provision in order to inform any enhancements or changes to provision.
Colleges may wish to focus on an item identified as a priority as a result of completing the Self-evaluation Checklist.
The Survey Planner comprises of:
- A blank Survey Planner Table to be completed by your college team
- An example of a completed Survey Planner Table.
It is supported by the Validated Question Sets and Survey Question Bank.
10 tips for designing a survey
- Include a clear statement on confidentiality and anonymity so respondents know whether they will be identifiable
- Ask the most important questions at the start of the survey
- Ask questions that require sensitive or personal information at the end of the survey
- Ask one question at a time, rather than including two questions together
- Try to use scales – ideally giving at least five options – rather than giving only binary ‘yes/no’ or ‘agree/disagree’ response options
- When using scales, assign verbal labels to each response option (rather than labelling with numbers only)
- Ensure that the visual appearance of the survey is consistent and accessible (eg scales spaced equally apart)
- Ask information that will help you to contextualise responses, for example, which subject the student studies, what year they are in, etc
- Provide an incentive for respondents to complete the survey (eg a voucher or tickets to an event). This will require respondents to waver anonymity but is likely to yield a higher response rate
- Close the feedback loop: tell respondents what you plan to do with the survey data.
Adapted from Imperial College London’s guidance on survey design.
