Some of the techniques you can use to achieve the best possible response to your survey:
- Involve representatives of the target group in the project
- Publicise the survey in advance
- Make sure the survey is relevant to the people you ask to respond
- Produce the questionnaire to a suitable standard How we can help
- Make its size manageable; not intimidating
- Promise confidentiality
- Allow people to complete the survey in a way that suits them, on paper or the web
- Provide free postage
- Provide an independent external agency to handle responses confidentially
- Set a suitable time limit
- Issue a reminder - preferably with a further copy of the questionnaire
- Offer incentives if possible
- Provide suitable feedback of results
- Take action on the results and publicise it
Some of these are mutually exclusive. For example, if you make a survey genuinely confidential, informants are anonymous, and you can't send reminders, or offer any incentive for responses received.
