An opinion poll is a research tool used to identify the position of a specific sample regarding a particular product, service, brand, idea, etc. The survey is a quantitative method and is conducted based on a questionnaire applied to a previously established target audience (sample).

1. Set your objectives

Before creating an opinion poll, it is important to clearly define your purpose. Generally, research is conducted to find out customer satisfaction levels, monitor performance, analyze competition, or discover various market indicators.

Write down what you want to achieve through the research and formulate a few questions that your hypotheses could answer, including some possible responses.

2. Define your target audience – the survey sample

Try to focus on the important aspects and a representative sample, because the more you expand the scope of the research, the more likely the number of respondents will decrease. This can happen because respondents may not be able to answer all the questions.

Along with the possible answers mentioned earlier, note down an estimated percentage of the responses you expect to receive. These will help you at the end of the research to realize the extent to which you can intuit certain variables. This entire process will also assist in synthesizing the important elements of the research.

3. Design the questionnaire carefully

Then, when designing the final questionnaire, you must consider that it defines the limits of the analysis and the final results. These limits can add value to the research or prevent you from discovering the important information you need.

It is important to think from the very beginning about how you will collect and analyze the responses.

In creating the design, you can use:

  • nominal variables, specific (e.g., colors, product names, etc.);
  • ordinal variables (e.g., strongly agree – strongly disagree, very frequent – never);
  • interval variables (e.g., number of employees, age);
  • ratio variables.

Even though research software includes a wide range of data collection tools, any of them will fall into one of the four categories above.

If you want to learn more about surveys, their creation, or the most commonly used methods, follow us on our blog, Facebook or LinkedIn, where we will periodically post information about what you should consider when deciding to conduct market research.

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