Questionnaire about your life in Dulwich

[sophie.ryden]

Hi everyone,

We are a group of Public Relations students who are running a campaign on Dulwich. We really need your help, and would therefore be ever so grateful if you could fill this questionnaire out for us please. It will only take you a couple of minutes.

Please just click on the link below to access the survey:

Click here to take survey

Thank you ever so much,

Sophie xxx

[Fliss]

Hi Sophie

It would be nice to know a little more about the campaign you are running, your aims and objectives? Is the questionnaire anonymous? And as students which establishment are you attached to?

Fliss

[Penguin68]

If you are students then I suggest that you ask someone from your department about research design - almost all your questions are open-ended, which will make analysis a very time consuming part of your study, and your layout is unhelpful - you keep asking for things in 3s but only giving a single line to input an answer. It would be better to list as many likely options as you can, so pre-coding responses, with 'other' left for those you haven't thought of. Some preliminary qualitative research could have given you a steer here. Your questions are ambiguous - 'what part of Dulwich do you live in' could be answered by an area (Goose Green); a post code (SE22) a description, (West Dulwich)- how are you going to analyse this? Sometimes it is worth 'forcing' answers into a format that you can use most effectively. You appear to be looking for quantitative results, but it is not clear to me what cross-tabulations you plan.

You ask for age and occupation, but not sex - are you assuming that there will be no differentiated responses between men and women?

Your Q10 actually asks multiple questions - how on earth will you interpret these?

(NB I teach marketing at University level, so I am reasonably aware of what I speak).

[paulino]

I am guessing that, given the sophistication of the survey design, there is not going to be an awful lot of robust analysis going on here anyway.

[edcam]

Blimey you're a critical and unhelpful bunch. Either do the survey or ignore it.

[newbie09]

Agreed - the questionnaire is anonymous as you don't give name / email / photo or anything, I don't suppose they will have to much trouble analysing the data if people put off most of the potential contributors.

The form design is fine, it's free to setup.

I'm a professional at marketin / design / information on the internet - but they are students having a go who should be encouraged. You'd be surprised the amount of students on my Uni course who didnt even consider any form of market research.

[paulino]

I think Penguin68 was actually trying to be really helpful.

The current design is actually going to end up collecting a whole load of useless data that will be time consuming and unproductive for them to wade through.

So in many ways it is worse than the recent Labour councillor's survey.

They should re-do the questions to provide multiple choice answers. For example, just off the top of my head: -

What do you think about your commute to work?

- Expensive

- Cheap

- Time consuming

- Pleasant

- Overcrowded

- Boring

- etc

- etc

- etc

- Other (please state)

This will make it easier for them to take anything useful from this. It also makes it easier and quicker for the respondent.

Just because they are students doesn't give them an excuse for not being able to design a semi-decent survey (unless they are Year 7's or something).

[Penguin68]

Paulino wrote:-

I think Penguin68 was actually trying to be really helpful

I was (I am not sure about the really emphasis - but thanks). Questionnaire design is a skill - Professional Market Researchers will be graduates who have then studied (probably) for the MRS Diploma and will be up to 18 months in the job before they fly solo on questionnaire drafting. If these are university students then they should have access to tutors who can give them guidance on design (without doing it for them). If not, then they need to focus on (start with) the analysis they intend to undertake, and work back from there to identify the questions they need to ask to make that analysis. What user information or understanding don't they have that they need in order to advance their (in this case) PR objective?

In particular they must consider how they will use (group, work on) the information they will be sourcing, the simpler it is, the easier they will find working on it. Researchers offer respondents age-ranges to 'vote' for to make their analysis job easier - otherwise they have to code each questionnaire into an age group themselves, rather than getting the respondent to do it for them. And so on.

We always advise pre-testing questionnaires, just to see what sort of answers come up, and whether they make any sense.

If these students got 60-100 responses from forum-ites (not impossible) they are going to be working for a very long time to code the responses for any form of statistical analysis - a disproportionate time for most assignments.

[????]

Thus speak a Quantitative researcher...this is Qualitative, surely???

[Penguin68]

Thus speak a Quantitative researcher...this is Qualitative, surely

A 10 question, randomly directed (other than at ED Forum members) questionnaire is a very strange piece of qualitative research - normally done face-to-face, either with depth interviews and focus groups - and topic guides, normally about 30-50 minutes long (or more) for 1:2:1 interviews (perhaps 90 minutes or more for focus groups) - qualitative research uses (on occasion) stimulus material, projective techniques - believe me, if this is intended to be a qualitative study then it is way way off beam. I have been involved in the design and conduct of qualitative and quantitative studies (including a seminal semiotic study to investigate a major advertising campaign)- I agree that the questions appear so open that they could form the basis of a qualitative interview - but 'live' and directed by the researcher, who is noting nuances, hesitations, retractions - not as an internet based survey.

[edcam]

Good grief - leave the poor woman alone. I expect she's regretting starting this thread. Penguin68 - you sound like you need to let your hair down once in a while!

[jim_the_chin]

Perhaps it's a piece of qualitative ethnographic research looking at the reactions to a survey request in a middle class affluent population? Are we being observed?

*dons tin foil hat*

[ruffers]

Given all the help we're offering, has anyone actually filled it in?

I have anyway, and good luck to them for coming on here and trying, and let's hope the advice is taken as constructively as it was meant.

[chez]

I've filled in the survey for you Sophie, but to jump on this bandwagon as a market researcher myself, I echo Penguin68 and Paiulino's points - I dread to think how you're going to analyse the data you get back - if you have any chance to change it at this stage I'd strongly recommend you do as it will make things much easier for you. If you would like any suggestions about how to do this, feel free to PM me.

[????]

I wouldn't worry Sophie, Market Researchers are ok at putting surveys together but know bugger all about adding proper insight to the findings, they're just technicians...get your info and make it sing, I'm sure you and your team will. Good luck.

[katie1997]

ruffers Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Given all the help we're offering, has anyone

> actually filled it in?

> I have anyway, and good luck to them for coming on

> here and trying, and let's hope the advice is

> taken as constructively as it was meant.

Ruffers yeah I agree with that - I have filled it in too.

Good luck Sophie.

[chez]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I wouldn't worry Sophie, Market Researchers are ok

> at putting surveys together but know bugger all

> about adding proper insight to the findings,

> they're just technicians...get your info and make

> it sing, I'm sure you and your team will. Good

> luck.

Massive generalisation which is pretty unfair given we were actually trying to be constructive!

[Kells]

Surely all the design tips on this page are applicable only if you know about the aims of the study, and how many respondents you're expecting? For example, if you have a drop down with a list of categories, the list would have to be exhaustive, which means that you might have a group size of only one or two. You can't do much with in terms of analysis with that either.

But if it's just to act as a pilot for a larger study, then I think free text is as good an option as any. Good luck with it!

[boswell]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I wouldn't worry Sophie, Market Researchers are ok

> at putting surveys together but know bugger all

> about adding proper insight to the findings,

> they're just technicians...get your info and make

> it sing, I'm sure you and your team will. Good

> luck.

I don't think that this thread is a place for criticising someone elses attempt at a piece of research, and think that PM's would have been a more appropriate method. However, ???? I'm somewhat at a loss for words for how you can justify making such an outrageously insulting comment about an entire profession. If it is based on personal experience then perhaps you need some professional training in how to recognise and commission high-standard companies. I'm not a market researcher myself but have used them in the course of my work in the past and found them to be an excellent source of insight generation, off the base of some fairly high level qualitative analysis (semiotic, discourse, thematic etc etc). I'm not quite sure where the bitterness apparent in your post comes from but would be fascinated to know!

[Sporthuntor]

Good old ????

Some people need to chill out a bit...

[boswell]

Sporthuntor Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Good old ????

>

> Some people need to chill out a bit...

Ah yes good old ????, denigrating someone's career and belittling what they work hard to do everyday, what a cheeky chap, don't you just love his rogueish good nature.

[Sporthuntor]

as I said...

[boswell]

This is what frustrates me about this forum, that people seem to think that just because the conversation you're having happens to be online totally different rules apply. If I was at the pub chatting with a new group of people and someone asked me to help them out with a project by filling in their survey I probably wouldn't start criticising it in front of everyone, but instead would offer them help privately (as I suggseted with PMs).

But equally, if someone said that they were a market researcher and ???? replied in line with his post above I'd think he was a bit of a w*nker and so I expect would everyone else, and I'd probably tell him so. Yet somehow there seems to be the tacit agreement on this forum that you can make genuinely insulting, mocking jibes on here and that as long as it's done with a modicum of wit it's OK and anyone who takes issue with it is just up-tight and needs to get a sense of humour.

Anyway, sorry to sidetrack your thread Sophie, I've filled in your questionnaire and I hope lots of other people do too.

[Mr Mann]

.

[sophiesofa]

I've filled it in and I hope your course goes well.