Communicators often need to use numbers to narrate a story. However, for people who love playing with words, it can be a “scary” prospect to conduct quantitative surveys. The challenge lies in asking the right set of questions, gathering information that meets the desired objectives, and analyzing the data to build your story. The question then becomes, “What is the best way to gather the information required to fulfill my desired objectives?”
When researching on best ways to conduct quantitative surveys, we discovered that launching a quant survey is much more than pressing a launch button that sends out a questionnaire. Communicators need to focus their efforts on building a solid hypothesis to test and developing clear objectives for the survey.
The four steps below will help you get the most out of your survey efforts:
- Build a Plan – Communicators should think about why they are doing a survey and how they plan to use the results. This involves creating a hypothesis of what you want to show with the study, understanding the central problem, and identifying the variables that influence it. Learn how to integrate the problem and its causes into a description of reality.
- Spend Time Designing – Once you have the built a survey model, you need to do much more than make a list of questions. Designing the survey involves developing and testing hypotheses as well as thinking about whether you will want to track results over time or not. Read more on survey design to understand how to select your target audience, data collection tools, and the survey parameters.
- Maximize Participation – Getting a high number of responses on surveys can be a frustrating process. You need to convince a large number of people to take 15-30 minutes out of their schedule to respond. Find out how you can maximize survey participation by creating a launch and promotion plan before even making the survey.
- Conduct In-Depth Analysis – Sorting through vast amounts of survey data can be daunting. Start cleaning your data by looking for outliers (high or low responses), which can really skew the validity of your results. Look at how you can analyze surveys and build correlations to tell a story with the data.
CEC Members: Download the complete tool for How to Conduct Quantitative Surveys. This is one of the accompanying tools to Step 4 in Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan.
Related Blogs:
- 3 Steps to Be a Better Listener
- CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
- Integrate Your Listening Efforts
Related Resources:

As we close the book on 2011, most of us are probably drafting our plans for how we intend to achieve our 2012 objectives. If you’re like many of the communicators who I have spoken with recently, you are eager to structure your communication plans so as to demonstrate the value that Communications can create for rest of the business. Perhaps you’re even using the CEC’s recently published toolkit on
For many of our members (and for CEC as well), January is the month when the annual performance review process kicks off. The review process is a great way to evaluate what you did well in the last year, but also to focus on your key areas of development. For most of us, the review process ends at the individual level, but it is equally important for the Communications function as whole (and for the team members who together constitute “the function”) to take thorough stock of its achievements and future objectives.
Listening to audiences is important to any communicator. But how often do you sense that what people say is different from the way they actually behave? Nod your head if you agree that there is a need to observe audience behaviour firsthand, understand their reasons for irrational behaviour, and do this in the most efficient way possible.
As communicators, we like to think that we’re good at listening. But, how often do you see messaging and communications strategies that don’t really resonate with audiences? We’ve discussed how the
It’s the old 80/20 rule come to life once again. I’ve been in communications for the past two decades (scary to think!) and in my opinion, 80% of the change in our business has come in the last 20% of that time.

