Conducting Surveys at Ohio State

Ohio State regularly administers surveys to students, faculty and staff at various stages during their academic or professional career. Those questionnaires and many results are available from the Center for the Study of Student Lifeand Institutional Research and Planning.

The data we collect are archived and can be used to evaluate various questions relevant to campus life and student development. IRP can help you consider ways the available data can address your questions. For more information about this, contact IRP.

You may also want to consider alternative methodologies for collecting relevant data, such as focus groups and face-to-face interviews. These approaches have significant advantages and may be a better choice than a survey if you are exploring a topic about which relatively little is known (in which case, it would be challenging to develop appropriate survey questions) and/or you would like to elicit candid, in-depth information.

It is easy to type survey questions into web survey software, and bulk emails can be sent with the click of a button. That should not imply, however, that a quality survey can be turned out quickly. Give yourself ample time—four to six months is not unreasonable—to develop a questionnaire that makes sense and is not overly burdensome on the respondent regarding survey length and difficulty.

Here is a reasonable example of timelines for an online survey:

Survey instruments should be “pre-tested” on a small number of subjects from the population of interest and revised based on their feedback. In addition, you will need to allow time for your project to be reviewed by various constituents within the university for the printing or programming of your instrument and the actual dissemination of the survey to its intended respondents. A survey that meets a tight deadline by cutting corners may miss the overall objective of providing valuable data.

Surveys should usually not be administered during periods of peak workloads or vacations, or holidays. More surveys are run during the spring semester than during the fall, so it might be advantageous to consider fielding a survey in the fall.

To minimize respondent survey fatigue and potential conflict with other surveys, a survey calendar is being developed and will be available soon.

While this may seem too obvious a step to mention, it is a critical part of the research process. Take the time to clearly define the abstracts/factors to be explored. Develop a few research questions you want to address for each of the abstracts/factors. Check in with colleagues and relevant decision-makers to elicit their thoughts on important questions to address. Review the literature on your topic to see how questions have been framed by other researchers and what related issues or themes should be taken into consideration when exploring this topic. The resources available through the University Libraries are a good place to begin a search for relevant literature. Professional associations affiliated with your area of practice also often maintain links to current literature in the field.

The content of the survey stems directly from your research questions. Still, great care is needed to develop survey questions that effectively and efficiently elicit your desired information. Ideas for specific survey questions can come from existing instruments, colleagues, target population members (collected via focus groups or interviews), and your own observations. It is essential to balance adequate coverage of your research questions (comprehensiveness) with conciseness. Avoid including questions that may provide interesting but not particularly useful results. Also, consider whether some of the data you want is available through other sources, such as institutional databases.

Surveys should begin with a statement that clearly explains:

• The purpose of the survey
• That participation in the survey is voluntary
• That the respondent can skip questions he or she would prefer not to answer
• Whether responses provided will be treated as anonymous or confidential data
• How information from the survey will be reported and used

When composing survey questions, here are some general guidelines to bear in mind:

• Survey questions should not be “leading” or contain jargon or technical terms that may not be understood by all respondents.
• Be mindful of how you are wording questions in your survey. Avoid “double barreling,” i.e., asking two questions at one time but allowing only one answer.
• If collecting any demographic information, make sure that the categories are inclusive of participants’ diverse social identities. If you need assistance with this, please contact IRP. 
• Response categories should reflect a comprehensive array of choices, including “not applicable,” “don’t know” and/or “other” where appropriate.
• Limit the use of open-ended questions; as much as possible, position these at the end of the survey instrument.
• Short surveys generate more responses and minimize the imposition on the valuable resource of the respondents’ time.
• Surveys that skip respondents over questions that are not relevant feel shorter and more pertinent to the respondent.
• Use embedded data where possible to avoid asking extra questions, especially demographic ones.

Survey methodologists specialize in the construction of survey questions and their response categories. Consider having someone with survey design expertise review your survey instrument: Institutional Research and Planning or Statistical Consulting Center. As mentioned earlier, it is very important to pretest your survey instrument with a subset of your target population. This provides a critical test of the clarity, comprehensiveness, and length of your survey.

Are you planning to conduct a web-based survey? If so, you will need to select an appropriate survey vendor. In addition to the programming and hosting services provided by a potential vendor, you need to know how they safeguard the identity of your participants and security of the data collected. Ohio State purchased Qualtrics and Redcap for institutional use. For more information, review the Qualtrics’ Privacy Statement, Qualtrics’ Security Statement and Ohio State’s Research Policies.

If your survey can be considered “research,” it needs to be reviewed by the Institutional Review Board. This process may take three weeks or longer.

According to The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, “research” generally includes any “activity designed to test a hypothesis, permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge (expressed, for example, in theories, principles, and statements of relationships).”

In general, surveys related to academic course requirements (i.e., theses, dissertations) and surveys that produce data that will be presented at or published in off-campus venues will require IRB review and approval. New analyses of existing data may also qualify as “research” in IRB terms. Contact the Office of Research for further information.

In general, it is not necessary to survey an entire population to obtain valid, generalizable results. A random sample will do the job while minimizing costs — including the costs of survey fatigue. If you need help determining an appropriate sample size for your project, you maycontact IRP for assistance. Texts on survey research design provide guidelines for setting sample sizes; sample size calculators are also available on the internet.

In your survey planning process, allocate sufficient time to compile the sample you will invite to participate in your research. The Ohio State offices providing the samples might need two to three weeks’ notice for a data request.

Many campus surveys offer respondents the chance to be entered into a raffle drawing for prizes. Gift cards and personal electronic devices are common prizes. The literature on survey methodology suggests that these kinds of incentives have a modest impact, increasing the response rate slightly.

Surveys that offer incentives to respondents must track respondent identities in some way. If identifying information (such as names, email addresses or student identification numbers) are kept with the survey responses and confidentiality is promised to respondents, the study needs a security protocol for keeping the data safe (see next item). Alternatively, you may want to consider providing a link at the end of your survey that directs participants to a separate webpage where they can register for incentives.

Survey respondents need to be told if their responses will be anonymous, kept confidential, or are entirely non-confidential.

Anonymous data do not include names, addresses, student identification numbers or any other personal information that would make it possible to associate a response with any given individual.

Data that are confidential contain information that may identify an individual respondent. There are significant advantages to collecting identifiers, including the ability to do “pre and post” studies and eliminate unnecessary demographic questions through linked data files. However, files containing individual identifiers must be stored with great attention to data security and access. If you plan to collect confidential data, contact the Office of Responsible Research Practices for more information on developing a security plan.

Before you begin your survey, develop a plan for analyzing the data and reporting the results. How will you use the data you collect? With whom will your results be shared? In what format will results be shared — as visual presentations, written or electronic reports?

At a minimum, most reports of survey results provide a full set of frequencies for each question. Cross-tabulations of responses across subsets of respondents are also useful, although care must be taken to protect the privacy of individuals’ responses. A general rule of thumb is not to report results for categories containing five or fewer respondents. Remember that survey results cannot be presented or published beyond the Ohio State community without IRB approval.

Consider how you might share your results with others on campus who are interested in related questions. By sharing your findings widely, you can not only enlighten the campus community about your work, but you may also be able to head off a new data-collection effort.