"How to Measure Your Communication Programs" by Angela D. Sinickas
copyright 2005 Angela D. Sinickas. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-9661757-1-9.25
Administering Survey Forms
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Just as the best-written and best-designed communication piece is worthless if it is never received by the intended audience, so too is the best-constructed survey form a failure if it is not properly administered. A story: The first time I was responsible for conducting a questionnaire-based survey, I didn't pay enough attention to the administration process upfront. Fortunately, I was monitoring the returns closely by department as the survey was distributed. After the first two weeks, I had about a 95% response rate from the
Employee Relations and Finance departments, about a 50% rate from
most others, and a measly 4% rate from the Production department.
Production, unfortunately, made up about half the company's work
force. A little checking on-site showed me one of the problems.
The questionnaires were still in their original box on the floor of the
break room in one of the production areas. On the plus side, though,
the box had been opened. I had sent all the questionnaires for Production to the V.P. of Production at his request. He had delegated the distribution to an administrative assistant who decided she didn't have time to stuff mailboxes or to repackage one-third of the questionnaires to send them to a building one mile away for one of the Production
department divisions -- or to let anyone know she hadn't done what
was expected. She had, however, placed one in the in-box of each
Production department manager -- so they probably thought the
survey had been successfully distributed to everyone. The way you administer your own survey, of course, depends on the nature of your business, where your employees work, whether they
have spare time during their work shifts, whether they have writing surfaces available, whether there are convenient meeting rooms nearby, the nature of the communication technology used within your company, the length of your survey and the money you have available. You may find that you'll want to use a combination of approaches for different subgroups of your audience. This chapter will help you make decisions about how to administer
your questionnaire, such as: • Who should be surveyed. • When to conduct the survey. • How to distribute the questionnaires to your audience. • How to collect their responses.(End of Excerpt). .
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