Surveys are a great, inexpensive way to get information from
your target market. Surveys help businesses determine how to manipulate the 4 P’s
of marketing: Price, Place, and Promotion. They can also help company
management decide what policies work in the office, what members want in the
county club dining room, etc. The possibilities are seemingly endless.
Surveys have to be reliable and valid. Reliability means
that the survey yields consistent results. Validity means that it measures what
it is designed to measure and it accurately performs its designated function.
In other words, you don’t want to give a survey to determine how much flour
people use per week, when what you actually want to know is how much butter
your customers are purchasing per week.
According to Patten (2009) the purpose of the survey is “to
determine the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of a population” (p. 9). Surveys
can’t be given to each member of the entire population because it can be a
large group of people. Instead, researchers must draw a sample of the
population. A sample is a smaller group of individuals that is still
representative of the population. When
the sample is “representative” it contains the same age group(s), the same economic
levels, geographic locations, etc. as the target population. Researchers must
be careful in obtaining these groups because they can be biased in many ways.
Surveys, despite their flaws, are highly efficient,
inexpensive, and simple ways of obtaining information from the populous. Two
examples of surveys at work:
1.
XYZ Company wants to create a new flavor of
soda. They need to know what flavors of soda their customers prefer. XYZ Company
hires a research firm to determine what flavors are the favorites of not only
the current purchasers of the XYZ soda; but also the opinions of desired
customers. The research firm has a small budget to work with, but still need
good and reliable information. They decide to send out surveys via mail to
consumers and people in the entire distribution area.
2.
ABC Company wants to start offering insurance to
their employees. They need to know what their employees need and what they
desire in insurance benefits. What company do they need to choose? Which
company has the benefits that their employees need? These are questions that
can be answered by giving their employees a survey.
Surveys can be constructed for several purposes, at several
lengths, distributed several different ways, and contain different levels and
types of questions. However they are formed and distributed, they are extremely
effective and inexpensive to distribute. As long as they are constructed
correctly and are reliable and valid, surveys are a prodigious way to obtain
information. An example of a survey question can be found on the main page of this blog, in the right panel.
Reference:
Patten, M. (2009). Understanding research methods:
An overview of the essentials. (7th ed). United States of America:
Pyrczak Publishing.
